



.liii 



OUT OF THE RUT 

A BUSINESS LIFE STORY 
A Revised and Enlarged Edition 

OF 

ASTIR 

(American Edition — Small, Maynard & Company) 

GETTENiG ON, The Confessions of a Publisher 

(English Edition — T. Werner Laurie) 

LES ETAPES du SUGCES, Souvenirs d'un 'business 

MAN ' AmERIGAIN — (French Edition) 



BY 

JOHN ADAMS THAYER 




G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 



fH4874 



Copyright, 1912, 
By John Adams Thayer 



Entered at Stationers* Hall 



gCU3:i4l.3u 



JVlANY people have wondered how I dared 
to print these intimate confessions of my 
business Hfe. 

It never occurred to me to consider it 
an act of daring to tell the simple truth as 
I saw it, any more than it did to look upon 
it as a daring thing to come back and do 
what I have told about in the last chapter 
of this book, hitherto unpublished in the 
French, English and American editions. 

John Adams Thayer 



DEDICATION 

1 HAVE been told so many times that this is 
an unusual kind of book that I am persuaded 
to believe it. If it is unusual, it should have 
an unusual dedication. It is customary for 
the author of a book to dedicate it. In this 
case, the representative press of the country 
shall be the sponsors for the dedication. 

A large number of enthusiastic critics have 
pointed out that the book is likely to be of 
great help to young men. For instance, the 
New York Times says, "It is a great book for 
young men to read, for almost every chapter 
is an object lesson on how to get along in 
business in a legitimate way ; " The Seattle 
Post-Intelligencer says, "It will prove most 
helpful to the youths who have to fight the 
battle of life, for it will show them that where 
there is a will there is a way ; " and the Phila- 
delphia Public Ledger says, ' ' It should be read 
by every young business man who aims at 
making a success in his career in a clean, 
legitimate manner." 

This edition of the book is therefore dedicated 
to The Young Men Of America. 

The Author. 



CHiJ 


CONTENTS 

PTBR 


Page 




A Confidence 


ix 


I 


A Publisher at Thirteen 


I 


a 


A Union Printer 


19 


3 


Typefounding before the Trust . 


39 


4 


On the Road from Texas to Maine 


55 


5 


A Type Expert in Philadelphia 


77 


6 


Advertising Manager of * * The 






Ladies' Home Journal" . . 


97 


7 


A Month and a Day with Munsey . 


123 


8 


A Year with a Newspaper . 


i53 


9 


Bleaching a Black Sheep 


177 


lO 


The Fight for Glean Advertising . 


191 


II 


My Master Stroke in Advertising 


207 


la 


Publishing " Everybody's " . 


223 


i3 


The Discovery of Tom Lawson 


247 


i4 


Divorced — with Alimony . • . 


271 


i5 


Out of the Rut .... 


293 


Index 


309 



A CONFIDENCE 



A CONFIDENCE 




FTER thirty years of hard and 
unremitting work in the 
business world, circum- 
stances arose which divorced 
me from my fulfilled am- 
bitions. The alimony was all-sufficient 
and I went to live in Paris. There I met 
many famous men. Talking one day with 
an author who, though highly successful, 
produces what the critics agree with the 
public in calling literature, he said : ' ' You 
publishers do not pay us ten cents nor five 
nor even a cent a word for what we write. 
There is not one of my books of which 
whole chapters have not been recast three 
and four times. Pages of manuscript are 
written, rewritten, then destroyed, to be 



XI 



A CONFIDENCE 



done afresh. I have worked for days over 
a few^ hundred w^ords which vv^ould not fill 
a page of an ordinary book. Writing is 
work, and the hardest kind of work. The 
man w^ho digs w^ith pick and shovel in the 
street has an easy job in comparison." 

As I thought over his words I wondered 
if I, too, could not write a book. I be- 
lieved I had something to say. If the art 
of writing came by work and work — and 
yet more work — there was hope for me. 
Had I not written and rewritten advertise- 
ments till they passed muster, and in the 
end realized large sums? But an adver- 
tisement — while it may be a short story 
— is rather a distant relation of a book. 
How should I clothe my ideas to fit them 
for the polite society in leather and cloth 
on the world's great bookshelf? I envied 
the trained writer who, knowing the style 
of many men — the lucid Howells, the 
picturesque Gautier, the descriptive Dickens 
xii 



A CONFIDENCE 

— could, as I thought, fashion to his own 
ends the diction that best suited his theme. 
I know now that a writer, if he is sincere, 
does not pick this or that style as a printer 
chooses this or that font of type. Good or 
bad, it must be as much a part of him as 
his character. 

But this I had to learn, and while I 
was groping for light, someone told me to 
read the memoirs of a famous general. 
At the end of the first chapter I put the 
book aside, for it told only of ancestors. 
I have ancestors myself — one, they say, 
made himself felt in William the Con- 
queror's day — but their dim ghosts played 
no part in my world of actualities, and 
plainly had no business in my book. 
Disappointed in my general, I decided to 
tell this story in my own way. Dates and 
figures, which bore most people, I have 
avoided. Details I have given when details 
seemed significant, and old letters and 
xiii 



A CONFIDENCE 



scrapbooks, preserved from boyhood, have 
repeatedly recalled them with a precision 
which no memory, however retentive, 
could equal. 

Though it was my good fortune to know 
some of them intimately, I have not essayed 
to depict or characterize the employers and 
co-workers with whom I have touched 
elbows in my business career. I have 
merely set down, in all sincerity and with- 
out prejudice, a few plain truths, and I 
trust that the most romancing spirit will 
see naught else between the lines. 

This autobiography is a story of hard 
work, not luck. To quote an appreciative 
friend : ' ' When a man starts as a printer 
and makes a habit of working unlimited 
hours a day, using every pound of pressure 
and energy, developing every atom of his 
originality and initiative, I don't think it 
particularly lucky if he arrives somewhere 
at the end of forty odd years. It recalls 
xiv 



A CONFIDENCE 



Maurice Barrymore's remark at billiards, 
when he made a twice round the table shot 
on a fluke, which caused his opponent to 
drop his cue and exclaim: " Holy God ! " 
With his sweet smile, Barrymore replied: 
*'No, not wholly God. I was in it, too." 
Hard work has entered into these pages, 
but with the work has come pleasure. To 
live one's business life over again, as I 
have here, is a privilege which few know. 
With the optimism which has been my 
lifelong tonic, I send this book forth. 
American youth is ambitious to do some- 
thing worth while. As I see it, there is 
but one legitimate road to that goal. 



XT 



CHAPTER ONE 

A Publisher at Thirteen 



CHAPTER ONE 
A Publisher at Thirteen 




HEN as a mere child I went 
upon the platform at a 
Sunday School concert and 
recited : 

"When I'm a man, a man, 
I '11 be a printer if I can, and I can," 
I was probably as heedless of the real 
meaning of the couplet as I was of its 
prophecy. Led to a seat beside my 
mother, I sat with my hand in hers and 
heard the other boys declare, " I 11 be 
a lawyer," and "I'll be a preacher if I 
can, and I can," with equal unconscious- 
ness that these callings also would figure 
among my future ambitions. As adver- 
tising then ranked as neither art, trade, 
3 



A PUBLISHER AT THIRTEEN 

nor profession, it found no place among 
these stimulative jingles. 

I don't know where I got the idea of 
becoming a preacher, but I did entertain 
it. In fact, I have in my scrapbook a 
twenty-five year old letter from the sec- 
retary of the Boston Unitarian Association 
acknowledging my application for assist- 
ance, and promising its serious consider- 
ation. The matter went little further, 
however. I consulted my dear old friend, 
Daniel Monroe Wilson, author of the 
well-known book, '* Where Independence 
Was Born," then pastor of the first Uni- 
tarian Church of Quincy, Massachusetts, 
and I remember that while he did not 
advise me against entering the ministry, 
he spoke of the small salaries received by 
ministers, of his own many charges, and 
of the difficulties he had met in trying to 
make his sermons please the important 
men in the church, and at the same time 
4 



A PUBLISHER AT THIRTEEN 

interest the women. I felt then that I 
had a " call " to preach, hut I have come 
to doubt its force. Had it been serious, 
nothing would have stopped me from 
following my bent. At that period too 
many young men without funds burned 
to undertake the cure of souls, but since 
even the clergy confuse their sources of 
inspiration it is not surprising that the 
lay mind often goes astray. It was one 
of the cloth who in later years told me the 
story of a brother minister who resigned 
a charge of many years to accept a parish 
only ten miles away. " I feel that I am 
called," he said. A practical member of 
his vestry inquired what salary the new 
parish was to pay, and on receiving his 
answer, dryly remarked: "Dear brother, 
that is not a call, it s a raise." 

As for the law, that was my father's 
idea, as was the idea which grew out of 
it and determined my career. A native 
5 



A PUBLISHER AT THIRTEEN 

of Vermont, my father came in early 
manhood to Massachusetts at the time 
Sumner, Wilson, and Wendell Phillips 
were spurring people to think about the 
great issues which had their final settle- 
ment in the War of the Rebellion. He 
took an active interest in the problems 
of labor, abolition, and currency reform 
and became known as a man of sterling 
principle, fearless speech, and as an un- 
compromising opponent of slavery. My 
mother's interest in these matters was 
no less keen. She had early developed 
a talent for writing, and even as a girl 
had been, with Lucy Larcom and Mary 
Livermore, a contributor to that once 
famous journal of her birthplace, "The 
Lowell OfPering." In later life she wrote 
much for the local papers of Cambridge, 
the "Boston Commonwealth," and "The 
Woman's Journal ; " while the " Christian 
Leader" contained weekly contributions 
6 



A PUBLISHER AT THIRTEEN 

from her, both prose and poetry. Of 
such parentage, I was born in Boston, 
February 20, 1861, two weeks before the 
inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, and 
received my father's name. Several horo- 
scopes, given me for my amusement in 
after years, agree that on that date Mars 
and Jupiter were in friendly juxtaposition, 
and therefore I could be considered lucky. 
So I have been considered, but inasmuch 
as for twenty years after my schooldays 
my lot consisted of hard work at long 
hours for small pay, I have concluded that 
luck, as Matthew Arnold said of genius, 
is largely a question of energy. I am 
willing to concede, however, that it was 
a piece of good fortune to begin life in a 
community which from colonial times 
downwards has smelled of printer's ink. 
This local characteristic had beyond doubt 
its influence in shaping that second idea 
of my father s which I mentioned at the 
7 



A PUBLISHER AT THIRTEEN 

top of this long paragraph. His future 
lawyer must have an education, and realiz- 
ing that the "printing art," as he called 
it, was a great educator, he purchased for 
me in my thirteenth year a small printing 
press and a few fonts of type. 

I began by printing calling cards at ten 
to twenty cents a dozen, and as it was 
then a fad for young people to exchange 
them, I soon put money in my purse. 
Within a year I had made enough to buy 
a small foot-power press, and by adding 
to my fonts of type, I was able to print 
business cards and do other modest com- 
mercial jobs. My ambition outran this 
little success, however, and I launched a 
four-page monthly paper about four by 
six inches in size. I called this pygmy 
"The Printer," and at the head of the 
editorial column styled myself ' ' Editor and 
Publisher." Under the caption "Terms" 
one might further read that the paper was 
8 



A PUBLISHER AT THIRTEEN 

to be had for ten cents a year, a prudent 
stipulation adding that the annual postage, 
which amounted to twelve cents, was to 
be paid by the subscriber. The advertising 
rates were as tempting as the price of sub- 
scription. Three cents would purchase a 
line of Long Primer or what is now known 
as ten-point — I had no Agate ; while 
fifteen cents would insure a whole inch 
of publicity placed beside ' * pure" reading. 
But, as for securing advertising, I recall 
no precocious signs of fitness for the 
business I was eventually to follow. Such 
as I obtained was chiefly taken on the 
''exchange" basis, and some fruit, candy, 
or a bunch of mild cigarettes, for strictly 
private consumption, would in a twinkling 
exhaust the earnings of an inch of space. 
My real profits were indirect. I picked 
up, self-taught, the rudiments of a valuable 
trade, and I absorbed enough of the ' ' lead 
poisoning of type," to borrow Oliver 
9 



A PUBLISHER AT THIRTEEN 

Wendell Holmes' phrase, to color my 
whole future. "Keep on, John," said 
Charles Walker, superintendent of the 
famous Riverside Press, from whom I 
used to buy scrap paper for my diminu- 
tive monthly ; ' ' some day you will be 
the head of a publishing house as big 
as this." 

Meanwhile I shared the usual pastimes 
of the American schoolboy. For us Cam- 
bridge lads there was swimming in the 
Charles at an old dilapidated fort called 
the "magazine," some boating, and an 
occasional excursion across the bridge to 
the Beacon Park race course in Brighton. 

We did not sit in the grand stand. A 
few of us knew a secret passage under 
a corner of the fence, which for a number 
of seasons escaped the vigilance of the 
guardians of the Park. The best race I 
thus saw was the one in which Goldsmith 
Maid trotted a mile in 2.1 4, the record at 
10 



A PUBLISHER AT THIRTEEN 

that time. If there were no races, we 
bojs would ourselves make trials of speed 
for a quarter of a mile or more. One of 
my companions was John Glarkson, who 
afterwards gained celebrity as a baseball 
pitcher. He was then, in fact, the pitcher 
of a club called the "Centennials," which 
I captained. One match game with a 
Boston club I can never forget. Both 
pitchers were excellent, and at the end of 
the fifth inning neither side had made a 
run. The "Centennials" were on the 
outfield, Clarkson had struck out two men, 
and excitement ran high. My position at 
this critical juncture was that of catcher, 
and as gloves and masks were expensive, 
our club did not possess them. The up- 
shot of this enforced economy was disas- 
trous for me. Clarkson' s next ball was a 
foul tip, and as he already had much of 
the speed for which he was celebrated later, 
it shot through my hands and, striking my 
II 



A PUBLISHER AT THIRTEEN 

mouth, knocked me down. Obliged to go 
to a neighboring house for repairs, I found 
on mj return that our opponents had made 
three runs . I was able to resume my place , 
however, and as the rival pitcher lacked 
Clarkson's staying power, the Boston 
Club went home defeated. I bear with 
me yet, unnoticed by the world, some 
results of that, to me, famous game of 
ball. 

As for my education, in the literal sense 
of the word, it was sound so far as it 
went. I was graduated from the Webster 
Grammar School and attended the High 
School for about a month. Many a time 
since I have wished that I could have con- 
tinued, for it is this latter training, even 
more, perhaps, than a college course, 
which is the young man's mainstay when 
he enters business. But my people were 
poor, a livelihood had to be gained, and 
so it fell out that the composing room 

12 



A PUBLISHER AT THIRTEEN 

became my high school and the world my 
university. 

I sought work in a printing oflBce as a 
matter of course. It was the natural thing 
to do. I had not only handled my own 
type ; I had almost all my boyhood neigh- 
bored and had the freedom of the Riverside 
Press. Knowing the superintendent and 
many of the workers, I had become familiar 
with every branch of the business. Thus 
it was that I found my first employment, 
not as an office boy, but as a bona fide 
printer. My pay was five dollars a week; 
my hours were from seven to six. 

The story of the next five years may be 
briefly told. It was a struggle to rise by 
shifting from one printing office to another. 
Sometimes a change would mean slightly 
more pay; or again, the same wage with 
a better opportunity to master the business. 
So it was that in those five years I worked 
in seven different places, and thereby 
i3 



A PUBLISHER AT THIRTEEN 

gained invaluable experience, for practically 
every printing office has its distinct line of 
w^ork. For example, vs^ith my first em- 
ployer, Daniel Dw^yer, of Sudbury Street, 
Boston, I got my first know^ledge of news- 
paper w^ork, for he printed ' ' The Daily 
Hotel Reporter," a paper w^hich chronicled 
the hotel arrivals, the w^eather probabilities, 
and information of like value . The weather 
report came late, and as in those days there 
was only an hourly horse car to Cambridge, 
the tardy item often compelled me to choose 
between a tedious wait for the pottering 
car or a walk home. Many a night, as I 
tramped over the Charles, I kept myself 
awake by singing "I stood on the bridge 
at midnight," but though it was the 
same old bridge of Longfellow's song, 
the clocks somehow always struck a later 
hour. 

The poet himself was an occasional 
visitor to the composing room of one of 
i4 



A PUBLISHER AT THIRTEEN 

my places of employment. This was the 
University Press in Cambridge, the oldest 
printing establishment in America and the 
home of many famous books. I recall that 
I worked on a new edition of * ' Uncle 
Tom's Cabin" among others, and it was, 
of course, his own volumes which brought 
Longfellow's snowy locks and beard amidst 
our dingy toil. Of charming personality, 
and a manner at once dignified and sweet, 
it was a pleasure to the workmen even to 
see him, while to have a word with him 
in reference to a piece of his work in hand 
was counted a great honor. 

Changing from shop to shop as I did 
puzzled my friends. It made it difiicult 
for them to keep track of mie, and it also 
caused them to believe that there was 
something radically wrong in my makeup. 
Yet during these migrations my salary in- 
creased by successive stages till at nineteen 
I held a permanent situation at twelve dollars 
i5 



A PUBLISHER AT THIRTEEN 

a week, with a prospect of a small advance. 
But I was too ambitious to be content with 
this, and haying heard much of the success 
of a few young men who had followed 
Horace Greeley's historic advice, I decided 
to throw up my position and go to Chicago, 
which meant West to me. It conveyed 
another meaning to my fellow workers in 
the printing office, however. They had 
planned to give me a bowie knife and a 
revolver, but on learning that I was only 
going to Chicago, decided that I would 
need nothing of the kind, and presented 
me with their good wishes instead. 

I remember distinctly the day I went 
down to draw my last week's salary. The 
leading member of the firm looked over 
his glasses kindly, but not sympathetically, 
and said: 

" So you are going to Chicago, are 
you?" 

" Yes," I replied. 
i6 



A PUBLISHER AT THIRTEEN 

' ' Have you a job out there ? " 

"No." 

"Well," he said, "I guess you'll get 
one; you've a good trade. But remem- 
ber 'A rolling stone gathers no moss.' " 



17 



CHAPTER TWO 
A Union Printer 



CHAPTER TWO 
A Union Printer 



I 




'T this time trade unionism 
was not deeply rooted in 
Boston. So lax, in fact, 
was its grip that members 
of the Typographical Union 
were allowed, if they chose, to work at 
a lower wage than the fixed scale of fif- 
teen dollars a week. In Chicago the 
situation was far diflFerent, and before I 
started West I was strongly urged by 
one of my fellow workmen to join the 
union in Boston, and obtain a trayeling 
card, permitting me to work in all offices 
throughout the country. As this implied 
a jump from twelve to eighteen dollars a 
week, the prevailing scale in Chicago, I 



21 



A UNION PRINTER 



lent a willing ear. But on looking into 
the question of eligibility I found the con- 
stitution prescribed that a union printer 
must be twenty-one at least, and have 
worked as many years as an apprentice as 
love-sick Jacob first agreed to serve for 
Rachel. It seemed to me that I had run 
against a dead wall, but my friend re- 
assured me by saying, that although I 
was only nineteen, my knowledge of the 
business was such that he felt warranted 
in arranging the matter for me, which 
he did. 

Thus equipped, I began a journey 
which etched itself on my memory as 
many of far greater scope have not. 
For one thing, I had my first and only 
ride on an engine, an experience I have 
never yearned to repeat, as the engineer 
derived more amusement from me than 
I did from his hospitality. 

The railroad by which I went on 

22 



X UNION PRINTER 



account of its low fare, quite upheld its 
inglorious reputation. There were count- 
less delays, an accident to the engine, 
and a loss of nearly a day in the schedule, 
but arrive we did at last and I began my 
hunt for work. The value of my travel- 
ing card was at once made plain. Within 
two or three days after I reached Chicago 
I found employment at the union scale. 

Unfortunately, the disadvantage of union 
membership also developed. My position 
was temporary, the dull season came, and 
I found myself in the street, handicapped 
by the local prohibition against accepting 
less than the standard wage. The work 
was there. Again and again during those 
weeks of idleness I could have had it. At 
last I came across a most tempting open- 
ing. A foremanship in an office publishing 
a number of educational papers offered a 
kind of experience which had not previ- 
ously come my way. It was not a union 

23 



A UNION PRINTER 



shop, however, and its pay fell two dol- 
lars short of the prescribed scale. I de- 
cided that the situation was desperate and 
needed a desperate remedy. But what? 
Long pondering persuaded me to appeal 
to authority against the cast-iron rule. 

Acting on this idea, I called on the 
secretary of the Typographical Union, and 
was by him passed along to the chair- 
man of some forgotten committee, whom 
I found in the composing room of the 
"Inter-ocean" making up the paper for 
the day. In this forum I pleaded my 
case. I was out of work ; I needed 
money; if I could have permission to 
accept this lower wage until another 
opportunity came, I would not only re- 
lieve my necessity, but keep a "rat" out 
of a job. I think this latter argument 
must have struck him as new. "Rats," 
as non-union men were called, were not 
regarded with favor in Chicago, and as I 
24 



A. UNION PRINTER 



waxed eloquent on the wisdom of exclud- 
ing them from work, I perceived that my 
court of appeal was duly impressed. The 
permit was granted and I took the coveted 
place till the dull season passed. 

The fact that I was now for the first 
time a foreman impressed me but little, 
for, bound as I was to keep my promise 
to secure union work as soon as possible, 
I knew my authority would be brief. 
The value of this stop-gap lay in the 
character of the shop itself, which bore 
out my father's belief that the printing art 
was a great educator. This office was 
different from any of my former places, 
and the various educational books, papers, 
and pamphlets which flowed from its 
presses gave me at once an insight into 
the care one must expend on work of this 
kind and widened my notion of my calling. 
In the popular fancy a printer is an ink- 
smudged pressman, or a compositor who 

25 



A UNION PRINTER 



sticks the type of a book or daily news- 
paper ; but just as there are many branches 
of the business, so there are many kinds 
of printers. Used in its broad and proper 
sense, the term '* printer" mieans much, 
and brings to mind not only the names of 
men like Gutenberg, Caxton, and Frank- 
lin, but a whole train of reflection on the 
force which the art they practiced has 
exerted upon human history. Taking the 
rank it did, the shop of my temporary 
foremanship could not fail to influence a 
youth eager to get on, but besides the 
benefit I had from the character of its 
output, I enjoyed the special advantage 
of frequent talks with the cultivated 
gentleman who held the chair of editor. 
On publication day the last hour before 
going to press was usually devoted to 
changing words in particular passages, 
and this hour the editor would spend 
with me. To this day I marvel at the 
a6 



A UNION PRINTER 



ease with which this expert would trace 
words back to their original source that 
he might use the ones which most authori- 
tatively expressed his thought. 

The slack season over, I readily found 
work with the J. M. W. Jones Company, 
one of the largest printing olBces of that 
period. Here again was another phase 
of the business. They called themselves 
railroad printers, and although they also 
handled poster and job work, the printing 
of rate books, coupon tickets, thousand- 
mile books, and the like was their princi- 
pal feature. Few things could be more 
tedious. For a fortnight I saturated my 
brain with UP, D&RG, GBi&Q, C&A, 
PRR, etc., as I set up a route book for 
the use of ticket agents throughout the 
country. Seeing no glimmer of progress 
ahead of me in this sad stuff, I chose an 
opportune time to buttonhole the foreman 
and tell him of my training for the higher 
27 



A UNION PRINTER 



forms of job work. This means the 
typography of letterheads, booklets, invi- 
tations, and such orders from manuscript 
copy, and is a class of work which barely 
one out of a hundred ordinary compositors 
can perform. Owing to the illness of one 
of the men, I was given a trial, and ac- 
quitting myself satisfactorily, I was retained 
in preference to many employees of longer 
service, who were laid off when dull times 
again came round. 

In this office I participated in my only 
strike . Conducted with admirable dignity , 
it vividly impressed me at the time, and 
I think deserves mention here. I have 
already pointed out that the Typographical 
Union in Chicago was a powerful organi- 
zation. Each large printing office had a 
"chapel," so called, and whenever a local 
difficulty of any sort arose, the chairman 
had merely to say the word and the matter 
would be discussed on the spot. One 
28 



A UNION PRINTER 



afternoon there came to my ears the same 
sound Mr. Speaker makes when he calls 
the House of Representatives to order. It 
was the chairman of our chapel. He had 
no gayel, but his liberal use of a mallet on 
the marble slab, found in all printing offices 
for the imposition of type pages, brought 
us flocking round him instantly. When 
all the hundred or more compositors were 
assembled, he said that a number of mem- 
bers had requested him to call a special 
meeting, and with this brief preface asked 
a compositor named Cummings to state 
the case. Mr. Cummings was also brief. 
' ' There are few men here, " he said, ' ' who 
are satisfied with the present foreman. I 
don't question his ability as a printer or his 
efficiency as an executive. The volume of 
work he turns out daily is immense. Un- 
fortunately, the volume of his profanity is 
also immense. We have made complaints, 
but the truth is he can no more change his 
29 



A UNION PRINTER 



foul speech and hectoring manner than the 
leopard can change his spots . We are men, 
not slaves, and I know I only voice the 
general opinion of my fellow^ w^orkmen 
when I say that this office needs a new 
head. As we have previously brought this 
matter to the attention of the general super- 
intendent without result, I miove that we 
quit this office in a body and do not return 
until another foreman is appointed from 
among the employees of this room." The 
resolution was carried unanimously, and 
changing quietly to our street clothes, we 
departed. We all returned the next morn- 
ing. There was a new foreman. 

The change in executive made no differ- 
ence to me. Handling my own work with 
dispatch, I had come in for none of the 
deposed foreman's profanity, while I flat- 
tered myself that I had entrenched myself 
in a position which I could have as long 
as I hked. But with this conviction came 
3o 



A UNION PRINTER 



the query : Where will it lead ? A fore- 
manship would be the next step, after long 
service ; then an office of mj own, which 
would require capital. I decided that if I 
meant some day to be my own master it 
behooved me to acquaint myself with the 
business end of printing, and with this in 
view I one morning took off my apron and 
presented myself to the superintendent. 
In a little speech, which I had carefully 
prepared beforehand, I told him that I had 
had wide experience in artistic job work 
and knew, if he would transfer me to his 
business department that, on account of my 
ability to sketch and plan, I could give 
ideas to customers which would increase 
orders. 1 also added, when he asked what 
salary I wanted, that though I now drew 
the usual composing-room wage of eighteen 
dollars, I was perfectly willing to work for 
twelve dollars until I had proved myself 
worth more. The superintendent listened 
3i 



A UNION PRINTER 



to me patiently throughout, promised to 
consider the matter — and probably forgot 
all about it. Having then little of the per- 
sistency which I later found it necessary to 
develop, I made no second call upon him, 
but continued in the room above till after 
about a year's absence the incessant hot 
weather joined forces with a fit of home- 
sickness to drive me back to my parents, 
my friends, and the salt breezes I knew so 
well how to find in a sailboat in Boston 
Harbor. 

The foreman yielded a very reluctant 
assent to this vacation project of mine. 
In fact, his last word was a charge to 
hurry back and give the other boys a 
chance. The knowledge and experience 
I had gained in the West proved of such 
value, however, that I secured a Boston 
foremanship at a Chicago salary. Thus 
another year passed. More experience 
came with it, of course, but no real prog- 
3a 



A UNION PRINTER 



ress towards my ideals, and I therefore 
accepted the offer of a New Bedford 
printer who wanted a foreman. This 
man cherished a dream of starting a 
daily newspaper as soon as conditions 
should warrant the venture, but the 
scheme hung fire in my time, and the 
close of a year in his employ again 
found me ripe for change. I was and 
have ever been a stout heretic regard- 
ing the rolling stone adage, which my 
old-time employer tagged to his sober 
godspeed for Chicago. Moss is for 
ruins. In change lie possibilities. 

It was at this juncture that I had my 
first real experience in soliciting adver- 
tising. The week before I left New 
Bedford there appeared in one of the 
daily papers three columns of taking 
description of various local enterprises. 
It belonged in what is known as the 
"reading notice" category. In reality 
33 



A UNION PRINTER 



an advertisement, it read like news. I 
thought the language used was worthy 
of a better cause, but the scheme itself 
interested me, for, happening to meet 
the man who controlled it, he talked to 
me of his methods and of the towns he 
had "worked." His first move, on arriv- 
ing in a promising field, was to engage 
a column or two of space in one of the 
leading dailies at advertising rates. He 
would then call upon the chief firms, 
advertisers or non- advertisers, and pre- 
senting his newly printed card inscribed 
"Special Editorial Writer" to the paper 
in which for the time being he owned 
space, would confide his intention to fill 
two or three columns of Saturday's 
issue with live editorial comment upon 
the foremost business houses of the 
town. He would state that a big an- 
nouncement was not necessary, the 
smaller the paragraph the better, and 
34 



A UNION PRINTER 



then, if an order were given him, gravely 
note the personnel of the establishment, 
the date of its founding, and its speciality. 
By evening these memoranda would re- 
appear in an item of irresistible praise. 
If a merchant said he would take twenty 
lines, the paragraph would fill forty, 
so cleverly dovetailed that to eliminate 
half would ruin all. Naturally, the labor 
of writing amounted to nothing after this 
self-styled editor and his assistants had 
covered a number of cities. If an item 
were needed for a florist, say, they had 
only to turn to an indexed book to find a 
flowery paragraph which had already done 
good service. 

This man's account of his success led 
me to believe that advertising, then in 
its infancy, was something it might be 
well to add to my fund of practical ex- 
perience. In any event, it promised a 
living while I looked about for another 
35 



A UNION PRINTER 



stepping-stone. So reasoning, I invaded 
Rhode Island and worked the editorial 
advertising scheme with the " Provi- 
dence Times." I took two young men 
with me, advancing their traveling ex- 
penses on the understanding that they 
should reimburse me out of the profits 
from their work. My assistants, how- 
ever, showed no aptitude for soliciting 
orders. Having paid down a deposit for 
space, the work had to be pushed to 
completion, but as I did practically all 
of it myself, meanwhile footing the bills 
for three, my personal gain was small. 
Indeed, I even worked one night on 
the "Times" as a compositor to add 
five dollars to my funds. The publisher 
of the paper congratulated me on filling 
so much space at a time when adver- 
tising was languid, and even debated 
offering me a position as solicitor, but 
nothing came of it. Nor did anything 
36 



A UNION PRINTER 



come of my round of the printing offices . 
There was but one offer made me which 
seemed worth a second thought. This 
was from a master printer who wished to 
give up active work. I was to manage 
his place for a year, and then, taking it 
over myself, pay him out of the profits. 
The plant had been successful, but as I 
looked over the office, with its dark cor- 
ners and low-studded walls, I contrasted 
it with the large well-lighted composing 
rooms to which I had been accustomed, 
and there and then told myself it was no 
place to spend my life. With this de- 
cision, more momentous than I knew, I 
again set my face towards Boston. 



37 



CHAPTER THREE 
Typefounding before the Trust 



I 




CHAPTER THREE 
Typefounding before the Trust 

OSTON seemed to be my 
Mecca. It did not worry 
me that I was going back 
without a position. I had 
my trade and the Typo- 
graphical Union here would not require 
me to work at a specified wage. By now, 
however, I had the fixed idea that the 
printing business and I should part com- 
pany, and I decided to advertise for a place 
in a publishing house or some kindred 
business in which my previous experience 
would tell. 

An opening turned up. Calling at the 
Boston Type Foundry, I learned to my 
delight that there was a possibility of a few 



TYPEFOUNDING BEFORE THE TRUST 

weeks' service in the specimen department. 
Delight! The word is not half strong 
enough. To give a job compositor free 
rein in a typefoundry is like turning a 
youngster loose in a toy shop. Brimful 
of enthusiasm, I presented myself to Mr. 
John K. Rogers, who, though he bore in 
print the unusual title "Agent," was the 
actual head and largest owner of this solid 
house which traced its beginnings back to 
the administration of President Madison. 
He was a Bostonian of the old school, digni- 
fied, courteous, amiable, and so considerate 
of others that he hesitated to let me take 
this temporary work because he thought 
it might cost me a permanent position 
elsewhere. My eagerness overcame his 
scruples, however, and I was engaged at 
the same, unescapable salary of eighteen 
dollars a week for a term, as he carefully 
explained, not exceeding three weeks, the 
hours being from eight to five. This was 
4a 



TYPEFOUNDING BEFORE THE TRUST 

my first encounter with the eight-hour 
plan, and I showed my surprise. 

' ' I long ago decided," he said jestingly, 
' ' that the proper division of time is eight 
hours for work, eight hours for play, eight 
hours for sleep — " 

' ' And eight dollars a day ? " I continued, 
completing the rhyme. 

"Not yet, young man," he smiled. 
"Not yet." 

I think I would have worked for eight 
cents a day rather than forego the toy shop . 
The first days were full of surprises. 
Great novelties to me were the types for 
the blind, and the Hawaiians, both of which 
were exclusive products of this foundry. 
It was a wonder, too, where all the type 
went to, for over a thousand pounds were 
cast and finished every day. But this was 
before the Mergenthaler typesetting machine 
revolutionized methods, and while country 
weeklies would use their outfits for a dec- 
43 



TYPEFOUNDING BEFORE THE TRUST 

ade or more, the big dailies, issuing many 
editions and printing from stereotype plates 
on rotary presses, required a new ' ' dress " 
every second year. Neither the hydraulic 
hot press nor the later cold press had been 
introduced, and stereotyping from papier- 
mache matrices was generally in vogue, 
the matrix being prepared in the old- 
fashioned way by beating the paper into 
the type form with brushes. One famous 
newspaper, the "Salem News," was still 
printed directly from the type on a curved 
rotary press, and many was the paragraph 
which, through hasty "justification," 
spilled out while the press was running. 
Conditions being such, outfits of body and 
job letter were always being shipped to the 
papers of New England, and their supply 
was an important factor in the business. 

But the most profitable branch of type- 
founding then, as now, was the manufac- 
ture of "job " faces, used for headings, 
44 



TYPEFOUNDING BEFORE THE TRUST 

newspaper advertisements, and, more 
especially, circulars, business cards, letter- 
heads, and the like. Fresh designs were 
from time to time brought out by the 
various typefounders, and when I entered 
the Boston establishment three new series 
of letters were ready to be shown to printers . 
It was amusing to discover one of the oldest 
tricks of trade in general playing its part 
in the sale of these wares. Just as the 
fruit vender always puts the largest and 
rosiest apples at the top, so the typefounder 
selects certain plump capitals to grace his 
specimen sheet and keeps others out of 
sight. There were less than twenty letters 
in our alphabet. A F L P T W and Y 
were avoided, but M, considered the most 
perfect, was chosen as the "monitor," and 
all the other letters had to line with it. 
Two imaginary signboards 

JOHN KOBINSON — HIDES 
WUililAM LATHAM — PAPER 

45 



TYPEFOUNDING BEFORE THE TRUST 

best illustrate the typefounder's discreet 
arrangement of his apple cart. 

As I studied the specimen sheets which 
had hitherto been issued to display new 
type faces, I perceived why Mr. Rogers 
felt sure that he needed my services for 
only three weeks. But I forgot the time 
limit. I saw an opportunity and I felt I 
was equal to it. Why not show these 
different faces in a manner so attractive 
and unusual that printers would not 
glance and pass by, but grow absorbed 
and decide that they could not do without 
them ? On my way home from my second 
day's work I bought two bottles of colored 
ink — red and green — some paste and a 
ruler, and with the printed samples of 
type before me, I worked far into the 
night, preparing a proposed specimen 
sheet, to be printed in colors. Previously 
these had shown merely two or three 
sample lines and then left it to the 
46 



TYPEFOUNDING BEFORE THE TRUST 

printer's imagination — if he had one — 
to discover how the type could best be 
used. My sheet gave not only samples, 
but adequate illustrations. 

Taking my night's work to the foundry, 
I showed it to my sole associate of the speci- 
men department, a pressman. He thought 
it novel and admirable, but doubted if I 
could put the scheme through. More 
valuable was his suggestion that I delay 
broaching the subject till after lunch, a 
piece of advice capable of wide application. 
The early afternoon is the time to take 
any new suggestion to any employer. 
Approaching Mr. Rogers, therefore, when 
the important afPairs of the morning were 
off his mind and the small bottle of claret 
he drank daily was still a warm and cheer- 
ing memory, I found him not only pleased 
with the interest I had taken, but even 
willing as soon as I made it plain that it 
was no more difficult, if one knew how, 
47 



TYPEFOUNDING BEFORE THE TRUST 

to print in colors than in black, to give 
me authority to go ahead. It thus fell 
out that the third day of my employment 
saw me in charge of the specimen depart- 
ment, consisting of one man, one press, 
and, most important, types and materials 
for my every w^ant. 

This foothold obtained, I w^orked with 
an aim more far-reaching than the sale of 
this particular series of type. I wanted 
this specimen sheet to coax such prompt 
and liberal orders from the printers as 
should prove the value of my idea and 
remind nay employer that he had other 
fine faces of type, too gingerly shown in 
the past, which I could also display in an 
attractive manner. On the day the sheets 
were mailed I took care that the foreman 
of every large printing office in the city 
should personally receive a copy. The 
result was all I hoped. Orders flowed in 
at once, the three-week limit was passed 
48 



TYPEFOUNDING BEFORE THE TRUST 

in safety, and plans for new sheets and 
new specimen books multiplied so fast 
that I saw myself a fixture for as long 
as I chose to remain. 

With the assurance of permanency 
came the same old query : * ' Where will it 
lead? " A rolKng stone who had profited 
by nearly every roll, I could never settle 
into an easy corner and forget the thought 
of advancement. It seemed to me now 
that, with my knowledge, I could help 
both the business and myself if I were 
to see the printers personally, as a sales- 
man, but my employer vetoed the idea. 
Another suggestion, which I still believe 
sound, also failed to appeal to him. 
There were in St. Louis two foundries : 
one the St. Louis Type Foundry, the 
other the Central Type Foundry, once 
a branch of our own house, but now a 
separate concern manufacturing both faces 
and type bodies identical with those of the 
49 



TYPEFOUNDING BEFORE THE TRUST 

parent establishment. It struck me that 
if we could arrange with the former firm 
to keep a consignment of our faces in 
stock, we should have a new outlet in 
the Southwest for Boston-made type. It 
must be remembered that these were the 
days when the type bodies of the foundries 
differed one from another so widely that 
it was the part of wisdom for a printer 
to deal exclusively with a single house. 
These various bodies of type, known 
under the arbitrary nomenclature of 
"Nonpareil,'* "Long Primer," "Pica," 
and other names as unmeaning to the 
layman, were done away with by mutual 
agreement even before the Type Trust 
came into being, so that now the type 
bodies of all American, and even the 
English foundries, are on a basis of 
"points." Framed to deal with the 
haphazard condition of things before the 
point system, my plan had a value which 
5o 



TYPEFOUIfDING BEFORE THE TRUST 

would, I think, have justified itself in 
practice, but the conservatism of both the 
Boston and St. Louis foundries was such 
that nothing came of it except the convic- 
tion on my part that it was time for me 
to try another field. Thinking that per- 
haps one of the large English firms might 
be susceptible to American ideas, I wrote to 
the two leading typefoundries of London. 
The reply from the Caslon Type Foundry 
was novel and gave a piece of good advice. 
' ' Whilst thanking you for the offer of 
your services," it ran, *'we beg to say 
that, in our opinion, it is better for a 
young man to remain in a country where 
labor is, and is likely to be for some 
time, at a premium, than to go to an old 
country where labor is, and is likely to 
be for some time, at a discount." 

The immediate cause of my leaving 
the Boston Type Foundry was a patent 
hammer, one of the inventions of my 
5i 



TYPEFOUNDING BEFORE THE TRUST 

father. This particular hammer, which 
I now undertook to manufacture, was 
an improvement upon an earlier model 
which had been put successfully on the 
market some twelve years before. This 
later attempt was less fortunate. Techni- 
cal difficulties arose, and in less than a 
year the cost of production had swallowed 
not only the profits from the sales, but 
$1200 of borrowed money besides. Bos- 
ton being glutted already, I set out with a 
trunk full of hammers for Chicago, but as 
my arrival coincided with the annual stock 
taking of the hardware stores, I could as 
easily have sold parasols to the Eskimos. 

Once more I fell back on my trade. 
Turning up next morning at the printing 
office where I had been employed so many 
years before, I found the foreman to be 
a fellow workman of the days of the pro- 
fanity strike. With a brief summary of 
my fortunes in the intervening years, I 
5a 



TYPEFOUNDING BEFORE THE TRUST 

told him that I wanted, at once, three or 
four weeks' work. 

' ' All right, " he said. ' ' Will you begin 
now or to-morrow morning ? " 

I took off my coat. 



53 



CHAPTER FOUR 
On the Road from Texas to Maine 



CHAPTER FOUR 
On the Road from Texas to Maiwe 




I HIS return to my old trade 
I determined should be but 
a makeshift. During the 
following week I therefore 
wrote the chief typefounders 
of the West, applying for a position as 
salesman. I told of my work with the 
Boston Type Foundry, and enclosed a copy 
of a letter given me by Mr. Rogers which 
contained a sentence I felt sure would catch 
the eye. This testimonial, as old-time in 
its flavor as its author, ran : "I believe 
that Mr. Thayer's ability and honorable 
conduct entitle him to a more prominent 
place in the business world." From the 
St. Louis Type Foundry came a favorable 

57 



ON THE ROAD FROM TEXAS TO MAINE 

response. They were in need of a man to 
travel in Texas, but naturally wished to see 
him in the flesh before coming to terms. 
Disposing of my hammers to one of the 
big hardware stores — which ten years later 
still had them on sale — I said good-bye to 
my trade for the last time, and took train 
for St. Louis. 

Face to face, the matter was soon ar- 
ranged. I was to cover Texas and Arkan- 
sas, with expenses paid, at a salary larger 
than I had previously received. The pros- 
pect exhilarated me. The eighteen-doUar- 
a-week mark was finally passed ; I could 
' ' roll " to my heart's content. As the firm 
not only manufactured type, machinery, 
and other printers' supplies, but dealt 
largely in paper, I spent a preliminary 
fortnight wandering round the great es- 
tablishment studying the latter business, 
of which I knew little. By the end of a 
week I had memorized the various classifi- 
58 



ON THE ROAD FROM TEXAS TO MAINE 

cations and could with my eyes shut tell 
the diflference between machine sized and 
book paper, or No. i and No. 2 news. 
Prices were high in those days and the 
dailies paid six cents a pound for paper 
which now costs less than two. 

My maiden trip was to last four months, 
and the program of the first two weeks had 
been mapped out in minute detail. Mid- 
summer notwithstanding, 1 was supposed 
in this space of time to visit several places 
in Arkansas, and then, crossing the Texas 
border, make eighteen or twenty towns 
and cities on the exact days specified in my 
strenuous itinerary. I found it novel, in- 
teresting — and hot. , Despite its name, 
Hot Springs, Arkansas, proved cool, but 
once in Texas I sighed for the sea breezes 
and invigorating nights of the East. I 
thought of the East, too, as I now ran 
squarely against the Color Line. One 
piping Sunday in New Boston, when the 

59 



ON THE ROAD FROM TEXAS TO MAINE 

mercury had climbed to io5° in the shade 
of the hotel piazza, where, book in hand, 
I waited for evening, a negro approached, 
and halting at a respectful distance, asked 
for a drink of water. ' ' Of course, " I said. 
* * Go back to the rear of the house." But 
I had scarcely taken up my book again 
when " Get out of here, you black trash! 
There ain't no water here for such as you ! " 
came explosively from the proprietor's wife, 
and the negro shot by. The poor wretch 
was out of sight before intercession was 
possible, and I could only wonder what 
my abolitionist parents in the other Boston 
would think of such a refusal on such a 
day. 

It was perhaps unfair to judge Texas by 
Eastern standards, however. Life was still 
rough and chaotic there in many localities. 
Texarkana, which, as its name implies, 
owes allegiance to two commonwealths, 
was the scene of numerous shooting affrays, 
60 



ON THE ROAD FROM TEXAS TO MAINE 

and one of its notorious saloons stood in 
Arkansas so near the state line that a fugi- 
tive had merely to cross the street to reach 
Texas and absolute immunity till requisition 
papers could be obtained. In odd contrast 
was a certain collapsed "boom" town, 
which, once boasting twenty thousand 
souls, now reckoned its population by 
hundreds. The story of its decline is soon 
told : the railroad had failed to come that 
way. The factories and fine residences 
were tumbling to ruin ; the pavements 
were grass-grown and treacherous ; the 
lamp-posts had a Pisa Tower incline, and 
the inhabitants, neither rural nor urban, 
were, for lack of a police force, compelled 
to take turns in patrolling the silent 
streets. 

The lot of a salesman in such a country 

had little variety and less ease. I used no 

Pullman cars. A few were in use on the 

* ' Cannon-Ball " trains, but thej were 

6i 



ON THE ROAD FROM TEXAS TO MAINE 

not for me. When night overtook me 
on the road, I curled up in the seats of 
an ordinary day coach with one vahse for 
a foot rest, the other for a pillow. Travel- 
ing thus, it will surprise no one that my 
expenses averaged only two dollars and a 
half a day. Once when I spent nearly 
twice that amount I explained my extrava- 
gance in the weekly report sent to head- 
quarters. Under the heading "Remarks" 
I wrote : ' ' The large expense on this day 
was occasioned by the fact that I left Waco 
at four in the morning, saw our customers 
in Temple and Belton, and arrived at 
Georgetown the next morning at three." 
Valuable experience came with the hard- 
ships, however ; my persistence developed, 
my knowledge of human nature broadened. 
I bent all my energy towards obtaining 
orders from responsible firms, and the 
harder the nut to crack the more pleasure 
I took in dragging it from its shell. In 
63 



ON THE ROAD FROM TEXAS TO MAINE 

Galyeston, to give an illustration, the 
principal publishers greeted me with the 
statement that they made all their pur- 
chases in New York and that I could sell 
them nothing. Why should they buy of 
me when the freight rate direct to New 
York by steamer was less than half that 
to St. Louis by rail? Nevertheless, when 
I left town two days later, one of the best 
orders of my whole trip stood in their 
name. 

This showing so satisfied the firm that 
they straightway packed me ofiF on another 
campaign. On this second trip I added 
much to my knowledge of selHng goods, 
learned much also about traveling sales- 
men, and made up my mind, if I ever got 
back, that Texas should see me no more. 
To bring the company to agree with me 
was another thing, as I recognized, per- 
haps a week after my next return to St. 
Louis, when I was told to get my samples 
63 



ON THE ROAD FROM TEXAS TO MAINE 

ready because the Old Man — meaning the 
president, WiUiam Bright — intended to 
start me off again at once. Mr. Bright, 
be it said, was no ordinary man. An 
indefatigable worker, whose one defect 
was a too close attention to detail, he 
brought to the direction of this capacity 
a mind fertile in ideas. Beyond question 
he invented the card index system for 
bookkeepers. The ledger of our entire 
business was kept on cards arranged 
alphabetically in special tin boxes patented 
by him, a rod and a padlock securing each 
file in the manner now widely known. 
Fortunately for me, our personal relations 
were of the pleasantest. Often his guest 
at luncheon, and a frequent visitor at his 
country house, I met an indulgent, if 
astonished hearing, when without mincing 
words I announced that I had decided to 
travel in Texas no more. Asked for 
reasons, I furnished many, but the heavy 
64 



ON THE ROAD FROM TEXAS TO MAINE 

shot was this : "I intend to marry some 
day, " I said, "and I owe it to my future 
wife — whom I haven't met — not to be- 
come a confirmed traveling man, unable 
to do anything else, and saddled, perhaps, 
with bad habits." To the head of a family 
as happy as it was numerous, this domestic 
argument made its prompt appeal, and he 
inquired kindly what I meant to do. I 
modestly suggested that he permit me to 
try city trade, a field in which we had 
no one, and the novelty of the idea taking 
his fancy, a city salesman I became. A 
year of such service followed. Then, 
choosing an opportune time, I asked him 
if he did not think I was entitled to a 
better salary. He hesitated for a moment 
before he answered. ' ' Don't be in a hurry, 
boy," he said, looking benevolently over his 
glasses. "There's George, and Ernest, 
and Frank, who have grown up with lae. 
If I raise your salary, I feel that I must 
65 



ON THE ROAD FROM TEXAS TO MAINE 

raise theirs." I did not see the logic of 
this reasoning, and soon after transferred 
uij allegiance to a brass foundry. 

This move proving as ill-judged as my 
experiment with patent hammers, I there- 
upon committed an even greater error than 
leaving the typefoundry : I went back to 
it. The end of another year found me 
still marking time. 

It was a home letter, telling how much 
I was needed by my parents in their old 
age, which gave a final spur to my unrest, 
and I began to cast about for ways and 
means to return. Learning that with the 
death of Mr. Rogers the old Boston Type 
Foundry had passed into the control of 
its former St. Louis branch, I proposed 
myself as a salesman for my former house. 
A new specimen book of the combined 
faces of both firms was just then under 
consideration, and my offer to take this 
over as well clinched the matter, and I 
66 



ON THE ROAD FROM TEXAS TO MAINE 

was engaged forthwith. My expenses 
paid, not for the journey merely, but for 
the cities I visited en route to see our 
resident agents, I returned with flying 
colors. That home-coming remains a 
touching memory to me, for I then came 
to appreciate the truth, which many learn 
too late, that life's real joys lie in doing 
for others. 

My work on the specimen book forbade 
continuous travel, and as I now mapped 
my own route, followed no cast-iron 
itinerary, and made few trips of more 
than a week's length, I found my jour- 
neys far pleasanter than in the South- 
west. Hard as they had been, however, 
the experiences of Texas and Arkansas 
proved of value, and thanks to their 
schooling, I sold outfits and dresses to 
many a crusty printer and publisher of 
conservative New England. Nowhere, 
East or West, had I known such an 

67 



ON THE ROAD FROM TEXAS TO MAINE 

obstinate case as I presently encountered 
in that stronghold of odd characters, 
Vermont. This opinionated citizen of 
Burlington bore a reputation so difficult 
that salesmen thought it a waste of time 
to cross his threshold. Transferred to 
the Dark Ages, he would have built up 
a lurid reputation as an ogre. Undis- 
mayed by these tales, I went early for 
my first call, and finding the publisher 
out — as I had hoped — mounted to the 
composing room, and with the freemasonry 
of an old printer, soon had the confidence 
of the foreman. His equipment was as bad 
as I expected, and as he unburdened his 
troubles, I told him that I meant to see 
his employer later, and suggested that we 
draw up a memorandum of the type and 
material really necessary to his work. As 
time sped on the list grew, and finally, 
in the hope that I might secure an order 
for a small part of the things I had set 
68 



ON THE ROAD FROM TEXAS TO MAINE 

down, I went below. His mail finished, 
the Terror sat barricaded by his desk, the 
cares of the universe wrinkling his brow. 
A curt nod acknowledged — merely ac- 
knowledged — my existence, and his peru- 
sal of a newspaper continued. Seating 
myself near, I waited for him to speak. 
After fifteen minutes he swung suddenly 
round in his chair. 

"What can I do for you?" he de- 
manded peremptorily. 

Tone and remark were alike familiar. 
I had heard them too often to tremble. 
Handing him my card, I said that it 
being my duty to call on the leading 
publishers of Burlington, I had come to 
his office earlier in the day, and finding 
him out, had visited his composing room. 
As a practical printer, I felt sure I could 
do something for him. 

"What is it?" he snapped. 

I produced my list. 

69 



ON THE ROAD FROM TEXAS TO MAINE 

' ' Here are the things your foreman 
thinks he needs." 

He merely glanced at it. 

"We don't need this," he blustered, 
but prodded the push button for the 
foreman. 

I was such an interested listener to the 
dialogue which ensued that they withdrew 
to finish it out of hearing. The list came 
back cut in half, but the half was mine. 
Over the hotel dinner that night I made a 
present of my method to the other salesmen. 

It was at this period I heard of the 
wonderful commissions given book agents, 
and while I suspected that selling books 
must be hard indeed to secure such terms 
from the publishers, I decided to have a try 
at it during a two weeks' vacation at Bar 
Harbor. The book was an attractively 
illustrated volume about that resort; the 
commission, equally attractive, was forty 
per cent. I felt sure that if I could only 
70 



ON THE ROAD FROM TEXAS TO MAINE 

get at the people who lived in these impos- 
ing homes, I should sell many copies, but 
occupied, as the colony was, with social 
affairs, personal interviews proved impos- 
sible, and after two days of rebuffs I fell 
back on the vain expedient of sending the 
book with an inspired letter. The real 
reason for my non-success was the false 
pride which is the bane of the immature. 
I did not want the fascinating young ladies 
of my hotel to think I was a book agent! 
One volume only found a purchaser. The 
subscription blank I sent to the publisher 
was a copy ; the original, which I still 
retain, bears the signature of James G. 
Blaine. 

But this was merely by the way. My 
real work, in sufficient quantity, lay else- 
where. In addition to the special services 
I had contracted to perform, I handled a 
large amount of the firm's correspondence, 
which, neglected by the manager, who held 
71 



ON THE ROAD FROM TEXAS TO MAINE 

his place by virtue of family ties, would 
frequently fall to me. I did not resent 
this. Active and full of energy, I even 
took pleasure in attacking a mass of orders, 
telegrams, and letters a foot high, writing 
everything by hand. Many a night I would 
go to the office, work till two o'clock, drop 
in at the old Boston Tavern for a few hours' 
sleep, and then return early to my desk. 
I learned much of business methods in this 
way, but I could not lift my salary above 
twenty-five dollars a week, though I did 
piece out my income with expert appraisals 
of publishers' and printers' fire losses, 
which, though infrequent, brought me 
from thirty to fifty dollars a day. 

Matters stood thus when, in 1891, there 
came persistent rumors that the type- 
foundries of the country proposed to enter 
a trust backed by English capital. This 
was absorbing news for me. If the old 
Boston Type Foundry were submerged, 
72 



ON THE ROAD FROM TEXAS TO MAINE 

what sort of life preserver would I get? 
I therefore wrote, without delay, to Mr. 
James A. St. John, of St. Louis, who was 
the virtual head of our combined houses, 
asking the truth about this report and my 
own chances for an increased salary. His 
reply was not reassuring. Unfamiliar 
with the details or the results of my work, 
he could promise no advancement till he 
had, sometime in the vague future, paid a 
visit to Boston ; as for the trust, it looked 
to him as if it would go through, in which 
case he would no longer be identified with 
the business. 

Plainly it behooved me to seek pastures 
new. Some months before I had tried to 
enter a publishing house. The attempt 
had failed, but the belief remained that 
such a business held great possibilities for 
a man of my practical knowledge, and I 
was even now studying how best to obtain 
recognition when I saw an advertisement 

73 



ON THE ROAD FROM TEXAS TO MAINE 

in the "Boston Herald." It was not a 
' ' want ad. , " so called. Displayed in large 
type and occupying three inches of promi- 
nent space, it spoke to me as emphatically 
as if it called me by name. 

WANTED 
A FIRST-CLASS MAN 

To take charge of the advertising 
pages, make up and direct artistic 
composition, etc. Must be famil- 
iar with the whole range of adver- 
tising business, and something of 
an expert at devising artistic dis- 
play. — ' ' The Ladies' Home Jour- 
nal," Boston Of&ce, Temple Place. 

I read and reread that advertisement as 
a street car bore me to Cambridge, and 
with every reading the conviction grew 
that here at last was the field for which 
all my varied experience had been a prepa- 
ration. There would be many answers, 
of course. How could I make my own 
74 



! 

ON THE ROAD FROM TEXAS TO MAINE 

efFectiye? Calling at the Boston office of 
the "Journal," I learned that only written 
applications would be received, and that 
night was devoted to the all-important 
letter. This I next day supplemented by 
three other letters written for me by 
prominent Bostonians who knew my 
qualifications. One was from Mr. Robert 
Luce, the author and legislator ; another 
from Mr. Potter, then publisher of "The 
New England Magazine," who told of his 
satisfaction with the type I had selected 
for him without consultation ; while the 
third was from my boyhood encourager 
and lifelong friend, Charles Walker, 
superintendent of the Riverside Press. 
Taking care to have my application type- 
written, I thereupon dispatched the whole 
array to the local office of the publica- 
tion and awaited results . A few days later 
the editor, coming to Boston, sent for 
me. My application had been specially 

75 



ON THE ROAD FROM TEXAS TO MAINE 

remarked, and after making note thereon 
that I would accept forty dollars a week, 
he said that it would be considered. A 
silence of some days ensued, which I myself 
broke by writing directly to the head of the 
company. This brought a response from 
the publisher, who asked me to come and 
see him in Philadelphia. I did not get 
the forty dollars a week — then — but I 
did get the position. 



76 



CHAPTER FIVE 
A Type Expert in Philadelphia 




CHAPTER FIVE 
A Type Expert in Philadelphia 

ARRIVED in Philadelphia 
early one Monday morning, 
enthusiastically happy over 
the prospect which lay be- 
fore me. I remembered 
the inspiring rise of that other Boston 
printer who first trod these streets in the 
early morning, eating a roll as he came. 
With a purse better lined than his, I 
breakfasted at Green's, but as I struck 
into Arch Street opposite the office of my 
new employer, I paused by the iron grat- 
ing of the quiet churchyard where Franklin 
lies, and with bared head paid my silent 
tribute to his memory. 

The Philadelphia of 1892 seemed any- 
79 



A TYPE EXPERT IN PHILADELPHIA 

thing but the "decaying place" he had 
found it, and "The Ladies' Home Jour- 
nal," though not the great publication it 
is to-day, had already begun its extraordi- 
nary march towards success. Established 
in 1 883 by Mr. Cyrus H. K. Curtis, with- 
out capital, it was edited for the first six 
years of its life by his wife under the name 
of Mrs. Louisa Knapp. Some two years 
before my coming, Mr. Edward W. Bok, 
a young man who had served his literary 
apprenticeship with Charles Scribner's 
Sons, had been intrusted with its editorial 
direction. Widely heralded as the young- 
est and highest paid editor in America, he 
had no easy task before him, but his ability 
was as remarkable as his opportunity, and 
the magazine sparkled with new life. 
Many novel series of articles piqued the 
public interest : ' ' Unknown Wives of 
Well-known Men," " Unknown Husbands 
of Well-known Women," and most effect- 
80 



A TYPE EXPERT IN PHILADELPHIA 

ive of all, a Famous Daughters number, 
to which the children of Thackeray, 
Dickens, and other literary celebrities 
contributed. 

Meanwhile the "Journal's" typographi- 
cal appearance remained unchanged until 
the publisher, Mr. Curtis, one day con- 
ceived the plan, new at that time, of issu- 
ing a periodical which should be artistic 
from cover to cover. This meant that he 
must not only use better illustrations, but 
replace all the black and heavy types, then 
used for advertising, with the lighter styles 
just coming into vogue. To carry out this 
revolution was my task, and to me, know- 
ing little of advertising, it seemed to 
present no great difficulty. But my 
cheery optimism struck an immediate 
snag in the simple fact that advertisers 
prepared and electrotyped their own an- 
nouncements, and having in many cases 
used the same advertisement for years, 
8i 



A TYPE EXPERT IN PHILADELPHIA 

had come to reverence its crude yet 
familiar features as the cause and mascot 
of their prosperity. Yet here we came 
with the impious proposal that if they 
wished to advertise with us, the sacred 
fetich must change and purify its face ! 

We had to make our own precedent 
in this matter. One newspaper, the 
"New York Herald," had laid down 
arbitrary rules forbidding display type 
altogether, and formed its larger letters 
by combinations of the capitals of usual 
reading size ; but there was no instance 
of such action on the part of a magazine 
publisher, and our clients rebelled most 
vigorously against the innovation. Accus- 
tomed to deal with publishers who would 
accept any copy, they would frequently 
hold back an advertisement till the last 
moment in the hope that it would slip 
into our pages unrevised, but intuitively 
sure of my employer's backing, I tried 
' 82 



A TYPE EXPERT IN PHILADELPHIA 

the drastic remedy of leaving these late- 
comers out. This, though effective in 
some cases, had its financial drawbacks, 
and I resorted to the gentle expedient 
of a registered letter to all advertisers, 
acquainting them w^ith our rules of display. 
To insure the better printing of the maga- 
zine, I explained, all advertisements must 
be reset in our ow^n type. We could use 
no electrotypes sent us, but if sufficient 
time were given, we ourselves would be 
glad to submit proofs for approval ; other- 
wise advertising matter must undergo such 
modifications as would permit its insertion 
under our rules. Open war followed. 
Taking the offensive themselves, they 
flatly refused to pay for advertisements 
thus inserted. But they fought in an out- 
of-date cause. A valuable medium, steadily 
growing in favor, the "Journal" could 
not be ignored, and as its appearance 
improved, their desire to make use of it 
83 



A TYPE EXPERT IN PHILADELPHIA 

strengthened. Inevitably they came to 
our way of thinking, settled their unpaid 
bills, and continued with us on our 
own terms. 

In this general housecleaning black cuts 
naturally had to go. This reform was, 
in its way, more difficult than the change 
of type, because it often necessitated a new 
engraving at our own expense ; but in this 
work, too, the support of my chief was 
sure. It is often said of Mr. Curtis that 
once he has the right man in the right 
place he gives him full sway. Certainly 
I could not complain on this score. I was 
given sufficient rope to make or hang my- 
self. Only once in all my typographical 
changes did I consult him. A full-page 
advertisement, the price of which was 
$3ooo for the single issue, had put me 
in a quandary. Arriving just before we 
went to press, the proof bore the warning: 
' ' Will not accept any change in this 
84 



A TYPE EXPERT IN PHILADELPHIA 

advertisement," yet its top line, "How 
to Feed the Baby," was displayed in as 
flagrant disregard of our new rules as big 
black type could make it. To leave out a 
full page now was a serious matter, for 
beyond the money loss loomed the neces- 
sity for alteration of the magazine's 
makeup. Hoping to get permission to 
reset the line in lighter type, or to 
"stipple" it, I set the long distance 
telephone humming, but it was a Boston 
client, and in the Massachusetts calendar 
that particular day stood consecrated to 
Bunker Hill. Hanging up the receiver, I 
decided to leave the decision to head- 
quarters, and taking my way in some 
trepidation to Mr. Curtis, I showed 
him the proof. He gave it a brief 
glance. 

"Well, what about it?" 

"It doesn't come within our rules of 
display," I answered. 
85 



A TYPE EXPERT IN PHILADELPHIA 

To my relief he did not ask me to 
define them. 

"You're the doctor," he said tersely, 
and handed the proof back. 

I felt that explanations were due, how- 
ever, and pointed out that the page must 
either go in as it was, or be left out alto- 
gether and reading matter found to take 
its place. Its money value being what it 
was, I had hesitated to act without con- 
sulting him. At this he turned in his 
chair and delivered some axiomatic truths 
about weak-kneed publishers who went to 
the wall because they did not adhere to 
their rates, gave out inflated circulation 
statements, formulated policies and broke 
them, and committed other sins common 
at the time. But of the page in hand, 
never a word ! 

Our mail a few days afterwards con- 
tained a letter from the advertising 
manager who had sent me the omitted 
86 



A TYPE EXPERT IN PHILADELPHIA 

advertisement. One paragraph ran : "As 
we have never been favored with a copy 
of your rules of display, would it not be 
well to send us either a framed or an un- 
framed impression of these impediments 
to business, to hang in our outer office 
for our own reference, and as an awful 
example to the many representatives of 
other publications who call upon us ? " 
We retained this advertiser's business 
notwithstanding . 

Out of this endeavor to make our pages 
attractive throughout grew a policy which, 
as far as I personally was concerned, 
came to wear the aspect of a crusade. I 
had been with the ' ' Journal ' ' but a short 
time when there came a six-time order for 
an advertisement of a certain sirup of 
hypophosphites, set in a black type which 
I saw must be changed materially. To 
its subject matter I gave no thought. 
Endorsed by physicians, it had the ear- 

87 



A TYPE EXPERT IN PHILADELPHIA 

marks of a first-class advertisement, and 
as such had received Mr. Curtis' sanc- 
tion. I knew Kttle or nothing about 
patent medicines myself, for in my home 
they were never used, my father's only 
cure-alls being tincture of rhubarb and 
tincture of turpentine ; but after this 
special remedy had paraded its claims 
before my eyes for several issues, I began 
to investigate proprietary medicine as a 
whole, and to perceive something of the 
vast range of fraud and quackery which 
lay behind its philanthropic mask. Choos- 
ing an opportune time, I suggested that 
it would be to our benefit to decline, 
not only this particular advertisement, 
but patent medicines of every kind. Mr. 
Curtis' assent was immediate and hearty. 
He said my predecessor had failed to use 
good judgment in this matter, that he 
personally had no desire to accept such 
advertising, and that he was glad I under- 
88 



A TYPE EXPERT IN PHILADELPHIA 

stood it. So began, modestly enough, 
a course of action which was to have 
consequences more far-reaching than I 
dreamed. 

While these problems were, one after 
another, meeting solution, there sim- 
mered in my mind a thought which I 
hoped time might translate into some- 
thing more substantial. It took its rise 
from a letter which our Boston agent 
addressed me perhaps a week after my 
service with the ' ' Journal " began. There 
was nothing remarkable about the contents 
of this letter, but its envelope gave me the 
title ' ' Advertising Manager. " What did it 
mean? Inexperienced as I was in the de- 
tails of the business with which I was 
grappling, I had few leisure moments, but 
whenever the chance came I would fish 
this envelope out of a drawer and recall 
a piece of advice given me years before: 
"Put your ambition high, and work up to 

89 



A TYPE EXPERT IN PHILADELPHIA 

it." For some time, however, I would 
always slip the envelope back again with 
the reflection that I had much to learn and 
must make good my present footing before 
I bothered my head with titles. The 
'* department " at the outset consisted of 
myself and a desk, but my employer, 
hearing that I often worked far into the 
night, presently instructed me to hire a 
clerk to keep my records. This spare time 
gained, I began to study how to better my- 
self. To improve the typography of the 
"Journal," to make it up in first-class 
shape, and to keep a record of the accounts 
were my ostensible duties, but in thinking 
over my experience as a salesman, I saw 
no reason why, if I could sell types and 
printing presses, I could not also dispose 
of advertising, and so prove myself of 
further value to the house. 

I saw my chance in the "Journal's'* 
back cover. Full-page advertisements 
90 



A TYPE EXPERT IN PHILADELPHIA 

were rare, even at this time of low prices, 
and the back-cover page usually held four 
announcements, though in dull seasons 
even eight would sometimes mar the space 
which I reasoned could be more artistically 
and more profitably devoted to one. My 
plan to utilize our cover in this manner 
was quickened by the fact that ' ' The 
Youth's Companion," with half a million 
circulation, was beginning to insert full- 
page advertisements prepared and sold by 
Mr. Francis A. Wilson, then the most suc- 
cessful promoter of advertising of a truly 
national scope. It was a novelty for a 
publication to prepare advertisements for 
a customer, but as advertising agents had 
already suffered shocks at our hands, I 
could see no harm in administering a few 
more, and with the firm resolve to sell full 
pages to some of our clientele, I began to 
scan our order book for likely victims. 
At that day advertisers would contract 
91 



A TYPE EXPERT IN PHILADELPHIA 

for a definite period, with the privilege of 
increased space at the same price, thereby 
gaining an advantage over those less pru- 
dent, if the rate in the meantime advanced. 
Selecting my man, provisioned in this way, 
I spent several days analyzing his adver- 
tising, and then formulated a full-page 
announcement which, I believe, struck 
straight at the heart of his special needs. 
My complete plan included a handsome 
wood engraving at the top of the page, but 
wood engravings meant money. At this 
pass I went to Mr. Bok, who had often 
complimented me on my achievements, 
took him frankly into my confidence, found 
him a willing listener, and gained his con- 
sent to incur the necessary expense. But 
for that bit of encouragement from a fertile 
mind, ever open to ideas from others, my 
advertising career might perhaps have been 
nipped in the bud. As it was, it bore 
fruit almost as soon as planted. Long 
92 



I 



A TYPE EXPERT IN PHILADELPHIA 

before this, of course, I had made my ad- 
vertiser s acquaintance by letter, and I had 
now only to tell him that I meant shortly, 
on a trip to Boston, to stop off, meet him 
personally, and show him an advertisement 
I had prepared. I had chosen well my 
customer, a future friend, and the day I 
sold him my first full page remains one of 
the happiest memories of my business life. 
My arrangement with the *' Journal" 
stipulated for an increase of salary at the 
end of the third and sixth months, but in- 
asmuch as at the close of the eighth month 
I had secured by personal solicitation nearly 
$6000 worth of advertising, I requested 
that beginning with October my pay be 
raised from forty to fifty dollars a week. 
In the formal reply the treasurer said, that 
while my services were fully appreciated, 
they deemed my application untimely and 
recommended that any further requests for 
an increase be deferred to the end of the 

93 



A TYPE EXPERT IN PHILADELPHIA 

year. But this disappointment was soon 
forgotten. For years, without any re- 
quests whatsoever, my remuneration con- 
tinued to grow, and on the announcement 
of my forthcoming marriage another un- 
expected increase in salary came my way. 
Taught diplomacy by this, I went gingerly 
about that other project which had its in- 
spiration in the envelope still reposing out 
of sight in my desk drawer. 

There was a sound reason behind my 
ambition to wear the title of the office I 
filled in fact. Personality nowhere counts 
more than in the advertising business, and 
as my correspondence grew I saw the 
need of emphasizing this factor. Feeling 
sure, however, that any direct suggestion 
on my part would come amiss, I arranged 
a little coup d'etat. Planning a letter- 
head for the exclusive use of the Adver- 
tising Department, I had my own name 
placed in one corner in very small type. 
94 



A TYPE EXPERT IN PHILADELPHIA 

The treasurer's name, on the contrary, 
bulked quite as large as a treasurer's 
should, and my modesty won his grati- 
fied approval. But there remained Mr. 
Curtis. Without his authority the en- 
graved letterhead bearing my name w^as 
waste paper. Delaying its use, there- 
fore, I watched my opportunity, and in 
the course of routine it came. Having a 
few days later to confer with him on 
an important matter, I submitted a letter 
on the subject which, as regards con- 
tents, could not fail to meet his approval. 
In heading it was open to doubt, for it 
was written on the new paper. The let- 
ter, true to my expectation, passed muster. 
The heading escaped comment, but not 
notice. The following day he, in turn, 
showed me a letter, wherein to my great 
satisfaction he referred to me as '*my 
advertising manager." 

Not long afterwards I ran across a 

95 



A TYPE EXPERT IN PHILADELPHIA 

sailorman who, years before, had cap- 
tained a relative's yacht in which I had 
enjoyed many outings in Boston Harbor. 
On his asking what I was doing, I rippled 
off: "I'm advertising manager of 'The 
Ladies' Home Journal,' Philadelphia. " 

"I don't know what that means, " he 
said, his moon face wreathed in smiles, 
"but it sounds good." 



96 



CHAPTER SIX 

Advertising Manager of 
"The Ladies' Home Journal" 



CHAPTER SIX 

Advertising Manager of 
'The Ladies' Home Journal'* 




WY account of my own 
activities as advertising 
manager of ' ' The Ladies' 
Home Journal" should 
be prefaced with a word 
about the striking campaign for a larger 
circulation set on foot by Mr. Curtis 
before I entered his employ. No such 
project had been attempted since the 
days of Robert Bonner. The latter, so 
the story goes, took whole pages of space 
in the "New York Herald," and in small 
type duplicated, a thousand times or more, 
the single line : ' ' Fanny Fern writes only 
for the 'New York Ledger.' " The cost 
99 



ADVERTISING MANAGER OF 

was of course great, and his friends 
thought him mad ; but when the pastor 
of his church, a man who never read an 
advertisement, called to show him the 
error of his ways, Mr. Bonner had a clear 
vision of his ultimate success. So it was 
with Cyrus Curtis. The publishing world 
prophesied bankruptcy, but he footed his 
extravagant bills with a stout faith. Aim- 
ing at a feminine clientele, one of his first 
and most telling moves was to follow 
the advice of his agents, N. W. Ayer & 
Son, and take large space in "The Delin- 
eator," which, with a circulation of half 
a million monthly even then, was spread- 
ing broadcast fashions to exploit its paper 
patterns. This counsel was disinterested, 
for the usual commission given advertis- 
ing agents was denied, but it would have 
been cheap at any price. "The Delin- 
eator's " rates were low, and $6000 spent 
in announcements, cleverly prepared and 
100 



"the ladies home journal 

exceptional in size and style, so beguiled 
the women of the country that Mr. Curtis, 
as sure as Bonner of his final victory, 
straightway decided to disburse $1000 a 
day for a year. 

The full benefits, naturally, did not 
accrue at once, but the course of display 
so lavishly begun was all the time making 
for success, and work in plenty developed 
for the department of which I now became 
the responsible head. Continuing the plan 
of preparing announcements for advertisers 
I had used so successfully in selling my 
first full page, I designed others with such 
good results that Mr. Curtis hit upon the 
idea of establishing a "Service Bureau," 
and engaged Miss Jennie Frazee solely to 
write advertisements. A delightful little 
woman who wrote as she talked, she had 
won her spurs with the drygoods house of 
Barr Brothers, of St. Louis, where her 
work attracted Mr. Curtis by its originality. 

lOI 



ADVERTISING MANAGER OF 

Her advertisements w^ere aimed at the 
average customer, not the literary critic, 
and if one caught her up for a lapse of 
grammar, she would reply, "Yes, but 
that s the w^ay the majority of people would 
say it." Her coming necessitated the ser- 
vices of an artist, and we accordingly en- 
listed the aid of Miss Jessie Willcox Smith, 
now well known as an illustrator. An- 
nouncements written by Miss Frazee and 
illustrated by Miss Smith proved successful 
from the outset, and when advertisers, who 
usually took twenty-five or fifty lines, saw 
the work of these clever collaborators, they 
would double, triple, and even quadruple 
their space. Other artists were soon 
needed, and our bureau was further 
strengthened by the work of Miss Violet 
Oakley and Miss Elizabeth Shippen Green, 
who also have since achieved marked dis- 
tinction in the world of art. 

At this time I entered my first and only 
1 02 



"THE LADIES HOME JOURNAL 

prize contest. Allcock's Porous Plasters 
were my theme, and as thej had alleviated 
the penalty of too long hours at my desk, 
I wrote in full sympathy with the subject. 
In one inspired evening I produced a series 
which brought me $i5o, the first prize. 

Advertising was then placed mainly by 
advertising agents, and one of them, Mr. 
J. Walter Thompson, of New York, finding 
it impossible to obtain a special rate in the 
"Journal," not unusual for him in other 
publications, now proposed, in considera- 
tion of a five per cent discount, to pay for 
all advertising in advance, a check to 
accompany every order. As Mr. Curtis' 
expenditures were enormous, this sugges- 
tion from a man who placed an immense 
volume of advertising held advantages too 
great to neglect, and with the understanding 
that other agents should receive the same 
discount for such payments, this radical 
departure from custom was adopted. Soon 
io3 



ADVERTISING MANAGER OF 

after my coming to the Advertising De- 
partment we issued a new rate card, and 
announcing this plan, added that we should 
deem advance payments proof of an adver- 
tiser's or agent's financial stability. The 
rigor of this rule was later modified to 
allow five days' grace from the date of the 
bill ; failure to settle within that time, the 
postmark of the letter being admitted as 
evidence, serving to deprive the tardy of 
any discount whatever. To the manufac- 
turers of dress goods and other feminine 
wear the notion of paying for advertise- 
ments nearly a month in advance seemed 
revolutionary in the extreme. They gave 
their customers from three to six months' 
time, and dated their bills ahead at that! 
But the "Journal" was a powerful me- 
dium, five per cent was five per cent — 
and they fell in line. 

This scheme of payment made it neces- 
sary to forward copies of the magazine to 
io4 



*'THE LADIES HOME JOURNAL 

advertisers in advance of publication, 
to the end that they might see their 
announcements before ordering the next 
insertion. For a number of years, there- 
fore, our advertising cKents w^ould receive 
a complete copy three weeks ahead of 
the reading public. But one day there 
appeared in a Philadelphia daily, ac- 
credited to a Chicago newspaper, a poem 
by Eugene Field, which a too zealous 
exchange editor had cribbed from some 
advertiser's advance copy of the forthcom- 
ing ' ' Journal. ' ' The press of a push button 
brought about an immediate consultation 
with the justly indignant editor, and I 
was asked, as soon as might be, to devise 
some effective check upon thefts of this 
nature. Half an hour later Mr. Bok's face 
lit with surprise and pleasure as I laid 
before him a "dummy" which solved 
the problem. It contained the cover, the 
advertisements, and the titles of the 
io5 



ADVERTISING MANAGER OF 

articles, but of other matter not a stickful. 
In this form, the reading part blank, it 
went out thereafter, and so continued for 
many years. 

Owing to definite agreements and other 
causes, several of the patent medicines to 
which I have already alluded for some 
time remained a thorn in my side, but 
hoping to be rid of them all by and by, I 
had to content myself with making full- 
page glorifications of Beecham's Pills, 
Scott's Emulsion, and Dr. William's Pink 
Pills for Pale People as inofl'ensive in type 
and copy as I could. Guticura was 
especially difficult to whip into present- 
able shape, but I wrestled with it to such 
good purpose that a full-page advertise- 
ment of the soap ran monthly, yet with- 
out affront to the eye, for nearly a year. 
As Mr. Curtis' publicity campaign brought 
business from other sources, these prob- 
lems, and in fact the whole body of 
io6 



"THE L-iDIES HOME JOURNAL 

objectionable advertising from which they 
sprang, gradually di^opped out of sight. 
The verv first medium in the publishing 
Avorld which an advertiser put upon his 
list, we could afford to pick and choose 
and be as fastidious as we pleased. 

Many fallacies were dispelled here, 
many theories tested. One interesting 
advertising fact we dcAcloped was woman's 
undoubted influence over man. A manu- 
facturer of men's suspenders, for example, 
thought it a waste of money to advertise 
in a woman's magazine. ^\e proved him 
wrong. Following up this idea, probably 
the first political announcement aimed at 
men through women now appeared in our 
pubhcation. Paid for by the National 
RepubKcan Committee, it devoted a page 
to an entertainincf tale of a woman who 
Avent abroad thinking she could buy su- 
perior dress goods cheaper than at home. 
Samples of fabrics were illustrated and 
107 



ADVERTISING MANAGER OF 

prices compared. High protection was 
then rampant, and the Kttle tale reached 
the inevitable climax that the fair traveler 
returned to America without buying any- 
thing. The advertisement was headed 
"Where I Purchased After All." 

Some numbers of a magazine, particu- 
larly those of April and November, always 
overflow with business, and as advertisers 
are prone to wait till the last moment, I 
put in practice another novel method. 
Two days before we closed one of these 
issues my assistant handed me a memoran- 
dum to the effect that if we received all 
the copy for which we had orders and 
promises, every inch of space would be 
filled. Needing all the time I could get to 
arrange this specially large amount of busi- 
ness, I accordingly wrote this telegram : 

' ' Please do not send any more adver- 
tising for the April number, as the space 
is fully taken/' 

1 08 



"THE LADIES HOME JOURNAL 

Showing this to Mr. Curtis, I told him 
that I meant to send copies of it to every 
one of the forty odd advertising agents of 
the country. Here, as aWays, lengthy 
explanations w^ere needless. Handing the 
telegram back, he said: *'Good idea. 
Send them." Half an hour later my 
assistant came with a sad face to tell me 
that she had made the mistake of counting 
a full-page advertisement twice. Telling 
her to be more careful in the future, I 
cheered her up with the assurance that 
the message would bring to us more than 
the four columns we lacked. And so it 
proved. Never does an advertiser long 
to use a publication so much as when he 
is barred out. These strategic telegrams 
of mine roused much favorable comment 
in the advertising world, but when similar 
messages left our office in the future, the 
space was actually taken. 

While things fared so well in my depart- 
109 



ADVERTISING MANAGER OF 

merit, the Western ofEce, under the man- 
agement of Mr. Thomas Balmer, was such 
an important factor that the advertising 
from the West often more than equaled 
the amount obtained in the East. To Mr. 
Balmer, more than any one man, is due 
the credit of lifting the advertising busi- 
ness to the high plane it now occupies. 
Bringing to his work a long experience 
gained in other walks of life, he sug- 
gested ideas which in some cases seemed 
Napoleonic, but which we know as standard 
policies to-day. Realizing that a truly 
scientific advertising must base itself on 
psychology, he set to work to analyze busi- 
ness failures, and conclusively proved, 
among other things, that the advertiser who 
buys small space pays dearest. Again, 
scrupulous of the ethics of his profession, 
he originated the contract plan between 
agent and publisher which makes it obliga- 
tory for the former to retain the publisher's 
no 



"THE LADIES HOME JOURNAL 

full commission and give rebates to no one. 
These instances indicate the remarkable 
caliber of the man who, becoming the first 
Western representative of an Eastern publi- 
cation, ever carried out the policies of his 
home office with unflinching loyalty and 
a firm hand. 

During my connection with * ' The 
Ladies' Home Journal" I saw many busi- 
ness managers come and go, and as I 
wished to broaden my experience of pub- 
lishing, I took it into my head that, when 
the next vacancy occurred, I would make 
a bid for it. Presently the chance came, 
and I told Mr. Curtis that I believed I could 
fill the place acceptably. He pointed out, 
as I felt sure he would, that neither in 
salary nor rank was the position as impor- 
tant as my own. Whereupon I brought 
to light my carefully devised plan of driving 
a double team, or, in other words, acting 
as business manager and advertising mana- 
III 



ADVERTISING MANAGER OF 

ger at the same time, with an assistant in 
each department. His rejoinder to this 
ended the interview . " It is not my poKcy , ' ' 
he said, "to put two departments in the 
hands of one man." 

I should not have been myself, however, 
had I not made that attempt. The aspira- 
tion to get on which spurred me from office 
to office as a union printer still persisted, 
and undiscouraged by this rebuff, only 
bided its time. Casting my eye over the 
magazine field, I saw possibilities in the 
' ' Atlantic Monthly. ' ' Printed at Riverside 
Press, it was the first magazine of which 
I had any knowledge. A great publishing 
house was behind it, with a list of books 
by famous old-time authors as well as 
newer favorites. As a business proposition 
for the book end, the idea was sound if, 
as I planned, the magazine could be in- 
creased from its small circulation of less 
than twenty-five thousand copies up into 



"the ladies home journal 

the hundred thousands. To do this the 
"Atlantic" would have to be materially 
changed and illustrated. On one of my 
trips to Cambridge I pointed out to my old 
friend, Charles Walker, this striking op- 
portunity, and he, speaking of it to the 
publishers, brought about an early inter- 
view. The delightful gentleman who has 
been for so many years the head of this old 
house was interested, but to change the 
magazine in any way — never! It was 
Boston. 

As was generally the case wherever my 
lines were cast, my next difference of opin- 
ion with my employer hinged upon the 
question of salary. Indeed, with the ex- 
ception of Mr. Curtis, I had never worked 
for anybody who raised my pay as often 
as I thought I deserved. I was not always 
right in so thinking, for when I became an 
employer myself, I learned that rapid pro- 
motion may handicap a young man's use- 
ii3 



ADVERTISING MANAGER OF 

fulness. Be this as it may, I had these 
notions about my services, w^hich, until I 
came to Philadelphia, no one seemed to 
appreciate at their full value. Here, for 
five years, increases came regularly. Then 
I was forgotten, or at least it seemed so, 
for one day the looked-for raise failed to 
appear. Selling personally large quanti- 
ties of advertising space in addition to 
many full pages, I believed my work 
should be better paid and resolved that, 
if I could not persuade my employers to 
agree with me, I would again get out into 
the world of opportunities. Nothing de- 
veloping at the next meeting of the board 
of directors, I frankly petitioned Mr. 
Curtis for $5ooo a year. My reasons 
were two : I felt I was worth it, and I 
needed the money. To the latter argu- 
ment he dryly replied that whether I 
needed the money or not was a personal 
matter in which he had no interest. As 
ii4 



"the ladies home journal 

for the salary, he stated that so many 
heads of departments had requested more 
pay for their subordinates that the total 
amount involved had decided him to de- 
lay all increases for another year. 

My disappointment must have been evi- 
dent, for a fevv^ days later I was told that I 
might go abroad at the company's expense 
— a suggestion I had often advanced — and 
that in the fall the salary I asked would be 
mine. Supplied with ample funds and fol- 
lowed by a bon voyage telegram from the 
editor, I set out on my first transatlantic 
trip. The outing broadened my point of 
view and put me in the way of meeting 
many advertisers and advertising men 
whose acquaintance later proved valu- 
able assets. I now first came to know 
the hospitable courtesies of Mr. Thomas 
J. Barratt, managing director of Pears' 
Soap, whose remarkable offices and beau- 
tiful home with its art collection, which 
ii5 



ADVERTISING MANAGER OF 

included Millais' "Bubbles" and Land- 
seer's "Monarch of the Glen," I found 
full of interest. 

The fall saw me back at work and 
my salary at the $5ooo mark promised. 
Those were piping times everywhere, and 
the "Journal" rode on the crest of the 
wave. Totaling a quarter of a million 
dollars at my coming, the business of 
my department now had a yearly volume 
of twice that amount. It was the heyday 
of advertising, and the salaries of adver- 
tising men were beginning to mount with 
the profits. Repeatedly, I could have 
gone to newspapers at a higher salary. 

About this time ' ' The Saturday Evening 
Post," a story paper, was bought by Mr. 
Curtis. Its assets consisted of its name 
and the fact that it had been established 
in 1728 by Benjamin Franklin. To me 
this purchase naturally suggested an en- 
larged department, more work, and 
116 



**THE LADIES HOME JOURNAL 

probably an increased salary, but this 
vision of larger usefulness seemed remote. 
"The Post" could have no future without 
the miracle of a rebirth. This was, of 
course, before Mr, Curtis discovered in 
Mr. George Horace Lorimer a co-worker 
whose editorial ability well matched his 
own signal talent for exploitation. 

By normal standards I should have been 
content. But I was not. 

Systematized to the last detail, the 
Chicago and the New York offices prac- 
tically independent, my department ran 
with the precision of a faultless machine. 
I had leisure now for reflection, and 
reflection told me an unwelcome truth. 
Lodged permanently among the odd 
scraps of philosophy by which I steered 
my course was a watchword given me 
by a well-disposed friend early in my 
business life. "Don't get into a rut, 
my boy," he warned. "If you find 
117 



ADVERTISING MANAGER OF 

you are in one, pull yourself out quick." 
Was I not in a rut now? I had 
been with the "Journal" six years — a 
long time for me to work for one em- 
ployer. If I were not to become, as I 
hoped, a vital part of this concern, would 
not continued service unfit me to do 
battle elsewhere? In the fiercely com- 
petitive business world I had watched 
new men come and old men go. A 
mere employee, I too, some day, my 
maximum usefulness past, might tread 
their melancholy way. 

Speedily, and yet with deliberation, I 
set down my thoughts in a letter to the 
publisher, which I sent to a Boston friend 
for revision. This friend, an advertising 
agent well acquainted with Mr. Curtis, had 
acquired the art of "smooth" writing. 
My own style is to call a spade a spade, and 
not ' ' an agricultural implement for remov- 
ing the crust of the earth," but I realized 
1x8 



*'THB LADIES HOME JOURNAL 

the importance of this step and wanted the 
best advice possible. I received the advice, 
and my chief the letter. I said that I w^as 
satisfied w^ith my position and my salary, 
but in contemplating the future, as a young 
man should, it seemed to me that ' ' I 
should be placed w^here others of my class 
are : with such a stock interest, in addition 
to a fair living salary, that I could feel my- 
self a part of the integral whole, all work- 
ing for a common end . ' ' This , I suggested , 
could be arranged by giving me an option 
on $20,000 worth of the company's stock. 
Mr. Curtis' reply was not "smooth." 
"There is no such quantity of stock for 
sale," he stated, and as the flash in his dark 
eyes met mine, I read that my future was 
to him another "personal " matter in which 
he had no concern. I was as a spoke in a 
wheel, a part of his great machine, and I 
had failed to interest him beyond the day's 
work. I did not take umbrage at this, 
"9 



ADVERTISING MANAGER OF 

though to know it was worth while. Men, 
who are not slaves, make of their lives 
what they will. Before this hrief interview 
ended, there flashed across my mental vision 
other positions which I had declined ; other 
possibilities in the world yet untried. To 
my optimistic nature change still meant 
progress. To take one more roll, before 
the moss gathered, was my determina- 
tion. And I saw another milestone near; 
another break in the life-line of my busi- 
ness career. 

Within a month I resigned, having mean- 
while secured a position as business manager 
for Frank A. Munsey. I asked no advice 
this time. Men of aflairs, seeking counsel 
of their fellows, desire merely to have their 
plans approved. Munsey was considered 
impossible. Other men had gone to him 
and stayed but a few weeks. All advice 
would be against the experiment. There- 
fore I sought none. 

I20 



"THE LADIES HOME JOURNAL 

Just before I left for New York my 
friends — rich , well-to-do , and poor — gave 
me a costly farewell dinner at the Bellevue 
Hotel. I had never figured so publicly as 
guest of honor, and touched by this tribute, 
I promised myself that I would some day 
show my appreciation. As the feast neared 
its close the chairman received and read 
this telegram: 

"To be dined and wined upon entering 
a town is one thing. To be dined and 
wined by friends and business people after 
six years of citizenship is quite another 
thing. I wish I were with you to-night to 
join in personal felicitations to Mr. Thayer. 
- — Frank A. Munsey." 



121 



CHAPTER SEVEN 
A Month and a Day with Munskt 



CHAPTER SEVEN 
A Month and a Day with Munsbt 




iRANK A. MUNSEY is a 
brilliant man — in more 
ways than one. A real 
genius seldom makes a 
success of a business un- 
dertaking, but a man who is a genius 
in spots can be successful in business. 
Munsey is a genius in spots. During the 
financial panic of 1907 his purchases of 
common steel were so large that he made 
millions of dollars on the rise in values, 
and those who followed his advice at that 
time likewise profited, as I have good 
reason to know. His career as a publisher 
is a most interesting tale. Braving New 
York with ' ' a gripful of manuscripts and 

125 



A MONTH AND A DAY WITH MUNSEY 

about forty dollars in cash" — to use his 
own words — he for years faced what 
seemed almost sure failure. Seeing plan 
after plan crumble, doing two men's work 
by day, writing his own serials at night, 
meeting changing business conditions with 
fresh ideas, and finally, $100,000 in debt, 
fighting a single-handed battle with a great 
distributing monopoly which tried to shut 
him from his public — such was the rise 
of the man who after a quarter of a 
century found himself owner of several 
daily newspapers and many monthly 
magazines . 

It has been said by a rival that ' ' Munsey 
is not a magazine publisher, but a magazine 
manufacturer." As it is a known fact 
that the Frank A. Munsey Company's 
annual profits exceed $1,000,000, it is 
clear that, as far as earnings go, he is the 
most successful "manufacturer" in the 
magazine world. Some men issue maga- 
126 



A MONTH AND A DAY WITH MUNSKY 

zines at a loss ; Munsey makes his to sell. 
It was not a manufacturing publisher who 
drew the above distinction. 

My first day with Mr. Munsey stands 
out in my mind as distinctly as the one, 
when a boy, I was promoted to long pants. 
I was told that first morning to attempt no 
actual work, but to "breathe in the at- 
mosphere of the place." This was a new 
line of work for me, but I did my best. 
My arrangement was for a year at a salary 
of $7600 ; our actual relationship lasted 
for a month and a day. The story is best 
told in two letters and a prophecy. 

As a New Year's present, the following 
letter was handed to me at the close of 
day, December 3i, 1897 : 

"New York, December 3i, 1897. 

"Mt DEAR Mr. Thayer, — This week 

which ends to-night completes your fourth 

week with us. I have been studying you 

137 



A MONTH AND A DAY WITH MUNSEY 

I suppose about as closely as I should 
expect you to study a new man in your 
department. If I were in your place and 
you in mine, I should be glad to have a 
frank statement from you of the impres- 
sions you had formed of mie. Feeling 
this way myself, I naturally assume that 
you would like to know what impressions 
I have formed of you, and for this reason 
I write you this letter. 

" In a word, you are not the strong man 
I expected you to be. You have shown 
nothing of the versatility I expected to 
find in you, nothing of the alertness of 
temperament I expected to find in you. 
You have brought no new ideas to the 
house, no new ideas to the advertising 
department. You have brought no busi- 
ness, either directly or indirectly, to the 
advertising department in the four weeks 
you have been here — not so much as a 
line. You have shown no extraordinary 
128 



A MONTH AND A DAY WITH MUNSEY 

genius in your correspondence ; you have 
written no advertising, have got up no 
advertising. And in your handKng of the 
force you have not evidenced any remark- 
able executive abihty or even first rate 
diplomacy. 

' ' When you complained yesterday that 
I did not shovN^ sufficient confidence in you, 
I replied that you had done nothing yet 
to command my confidence. You an- 
swered that it was three months before 
you did anything at 'The Ladies' Home 
Journal' [sic]. Be this as it may, I sub- 
mit to you that there is a very wide dif- 
ference between the young man direct 
from a typefoundry, with absolutely no 
knowledge of the advertising business, and 
no pretence of knowledge of the adver- 
tising business, and on a nominal salary 
— between such a man and a giant in 
the business, a full-grown man, a fully 
equipped man, a great big salaried man. 
129 



A MONTH AND A DAY WITH MUNSEY 

From the one I should not expect much, 
from the other I have every right to 
expect a great deal. 

' ' Such answers as these on this point 
show a lack on your part of a closely 
reasoning mind, and no man can appeal 
to me, can command my confidence in a 
managerial position unless he shows well- 
thought-out reasons for every act, every 
move he makes, every statement he 
makes. This is only one of the instances 
that lead me to believe that you are not 
a close reasoner. Moreover, your ten- 
dency towards red tape, your tendency 
to surround yourself with a halo of ex- 
aggerated importance, your petty jealousy 
when a man from the advertising depart- 
ment comes to me, or I send to him to 
come to me — all this is extremely dis- 
tasteful to me, and will not go for a 
minute in this house. 

"In the four weeks you have been 
i3o 



A MONTH AND A DAY WITH MUNSEY 

here jou have hardly been out of your 
office. I expected, as a matter of course, 
that you would lose little time in putting 
yourself in touch with the advertising 
agents and with the army of advertising 
solicitors employed by these agents, to 
say nothing of bringing your personality 
to bear upon the leading advertisers of 
New York and New England. I made it 
quite plain to you a few days ago that the 
course you were pursuing did not appeal 
to me as the wisest one, and I think you 
announced to Mr. Ridgway that hereafter 
you would be in your office only a small 
portion of the time, or something to this 
effect. But in discussing the matter yes- 
terday or the day before you told me 
that there were so many of our solicitors 
in town that it was not wise for you to 
go down and recover the ground. In a 
word, if it is not wise for you to do this, 
and if it is not wise for you to establish a 
i3i 



A MONTH AND A DAY WITH MUNSEY 

personality with all these men as the rep- 
resentative head of the department, then it 
is not wise for me to keep you as the 
representative head of the department. 

"Now I will tell you, my dear Mr. 
Thayer, just where the great big mistake 
has been, and there is no question in my 
mind but that you have made a mistake 
and that I have made a mistake. You 
have overestimated your capacity to do 
for us and underestimated our capacity 
to do for ourselves. This is the mistake 
you have made. The mistake I made 
was engaging you on the great big repu- 
tation you had, the glowing statements 
of your friends, and the showing you 
made for yourself in the several conver- 
sations you had with me. 

"Here is what Mr. Barber said to me 
in Boston one day last fall. ' There is a 
possibility, Mr. Munsey, that you can get 
a great genius in the advertising business . ' 

l32 



A MONTH AND A DAY WITH MUNSEY 

*Yes,' I said, 'who is he?' 'Who is he?' 
Mr. Barber repHed with a smile. ' Why, 
there is but one man in the whole coun- 
try.' After a good deal of fencing, and 
the promise of strict secrecy on my part, 
I learned that that one man was Mr. 
Thayer, of 'The Ladies' Home Jour- 
nal,' and Mr. Barber assured me that it 
was Mr. Thayer who had brought the 
advertising department of 'The Ladies' 
Home Journal' up to its matchless stand- 
ard — stood for the department, made 
the department, was the department. 
And Mr. Barber added that, with 'The 
Puritan' on my hands in addition to my 
other publications, if I could have the 
assistance of Mr. Thayer, could have Mr. 
Thayer at the head of my advertising 
department, I need have no further 
thought of it, and that Mr. Thayer would 
make such a showing as we never could 
hope to have without him. 
i33 



A MONTH AND A DAY WITH MUNSEY 

"Well, all this impressed me tremen- 
dously ; it would have impressed most men 
tremendously. Then, too, there was Mr. 
Clark's statement to the effect that you 
were a wonderful business man, a man 
of rare energy, an indefatigable worker, 
etc., etc., etc. 

"These are the causes that led to my 
mistake, and I think I stated accurately the 
causes that led to the mistake on your part. 
You may not be ready to grant even yet 
that your coming here was a mistake, but 
from my point of view there is absolutely 
no doubt about its being a mistake at the 
salary at which you came. No man, I do 
not care who he is or what his line of work 
is, can afford for a minute to allow himself 
to accept a salary bigger than he is himself. 
The minute he does this that minute he is 
at a serious disadvantage. 

"It is possible you might be worth this 
much, or at all events a good handsome 
i34 



A MONTH AND A DAY WITH MUNSEY 

salary, to a house that knows nothing of 
the advertising business itself, to a house 
having a moderate know^ledge of the pub- 
lishing business, but here it is different. 
Your mind has not covered a wider range 
of thought than the combined minds operat- 
ing this business, and your experience has 
been less rather than greater than that of 
the combined forces operating this business. 
This being the fact, you have brought 
nothing to the business, no knowledge we 
did not already have, and as to your indi- 
vidual capacity, candor compels me to say 
that we have with us half a dozen men 
whose average salary is one-third of yours, 
all of whom are men who can make them- 
selves of greater value to me than I believe 
it possible for you to be. 

"This is a straightforward, unbiased, 

and as kindly a statement as I can make of 

my impression of you at the end of the four 

weeks with us. I regret exceedingly that 

i35 



A MONTH AND A DAY WITH MUNSEY 

I cannot make jou a report that would be 
full of glowing praise, but it cannot be 
done. 

' ' With this statement before you you 
will not be misled. You can bring your 
reasoning powers to bear upon the problem , 
and together with me, help to figure out 
the wisest way we can both get out of the 
mistake we have made. I regret the mis- 
take vastly more on your account than I do 
on my own, and it is my purpose to treat 
you in the most generous possible way — 
to do whatever I can for you to help you 
in making other connections or to help you 
in starting a business of your own — some- 
thing, anything that will be to your best 
interest and to my least disadvantage. I 
can better afford the loss than you can, and 
I want to stand back of you to the greatest 
degree possible in all rational considera- 
tion. Between us we ought to be able to 
devise some plan that would let you out 
i36 



A MONTH AND A DAY WITH MUNSEY 

without injury to your reputation. The 
sooner some move of this sort is made 
the more I can afford to do for you and 
the better it will be for you in every way. 
Feeling as I do, you see how unwise it 
would be for you to attempt to go on 
seriously with the work. On the other 
hand, it would be very unwise for you 
to seem not to go on with the work as 
usual until some definite plan is fixed 
upon between us. There is no reason 
why this thing cannot be handled grace- 
fully, cleverly, and satisfactorily to both 
you and myself. It will depend very 
largely upon your disposition in the mat- 
ter, upon whether you accept my view 
in the case gracefully and reasonably, or 
whether you oppose it in a way to annoy 
me. 

' ' Let me repeat that above all else, above 
all personal consideration, I want to help 
you to the greatest possible reasonable 
i37 



A MONTH AND A DAY WITH MUNSEY 

degree in getting out of the mistake we 
have jointly made. 

*'Let me say one word more. If you 
prefer to stay here throughout the year, 
and for which I agreed to pay you a salary 
of $7600, you may stay. I made a year's 
agreement with you at this salary, and it 
shall stand if you wish it to, but to my mind 
it would be a most unwise thing for you 
to do. 

** Very truly yours, 

(Signed) "Frank A. Munsey." 

A Sunday and a holiday came with this 
letter. Perhaps you can imagine the 
feelings of a man who, only a few weeks 
before in a position considered to be the 
most prominent in its line in the country, 
now, in his change for betterment, found 
himself, at an inopportune time and under 
adverse conditions, cast out into the ' ' cold, 
gray world." 

i38 



» 



A MONTH AND A DAY WITH MUNSEY 

Notwithstanding this letter, I was not 
crushed. The last paragraph, in which 
Mr. Munsey put into writing his agreement 
with me, up to that time only verbal, was 
an earnest of the honesty and fairness of 
the man. 

As an uninterrupted conversation with 
Mr. Munsey was quite impossible, I wrote 
him the following letter : 

*' January 3, 1898. 
"My dear Mr. Munsey, — 1 have your 
letter and I admire the frank way in which 
you have put the matter. I have naturally 
been studying you very closely, but this 
letter tells me more than a dozen inter- 
rupted interviews. You are a wonder to 
me, and the more I see of you the more I 
wonder and marvel at the great success 
you have made and are making. My 
study has developed the fact that you 
reason closely, but sometimes — often — 
139 



A MONTH AND A DAY WITH MUNSEY 

your quickness of perception is colored — 
changed — altered entirely by your emo- 
tional instincts. I realize that you are 
slow to put confidence in anyone, but I 
say most emphatically right here at the 
start that you engaged me for a definite 
purpose, and I should have your confidence 
from the beginning, and that confidence 
should not grow less until I make serious 
mistakes or exercised bad judgment. I 
came to you on the record I have made, 
and when you say I lack all or any one of 
the business qualities that go to make up 
a progressive business man, you accuse 
my former employers of lacking business 
acumen and sense and imply that my 
business friends — men with whom I have 
come into contact and know me for the 
work I have done, know me for the 
business I have taken from them personally 
— are blind, ignorant imbeciles. 

' ' If you were manager of a railroad and 
i4o 



A MONTH AND A DAY WITH MUNSEY 

engaged an engineer you would tell him : 
' There's the train ; there s your assistant ; 
there's your schedule, go by it. I want 
you to run that train and I '11 look to you 
for its safe arrival at its destination." If, 
however, before the train started you told 
the fireman that he could use just two 
shovels full of coal an hour and gave the 
conductor and trainbands to understand 
that you didn't want the passengers 
hurried, etc., you could not expect results, 
until such time that you decided that was 
not the way to run a train. 

' ' I have been in New York four weeks . 
I have been put in a cage and you have 
walked around and looked at me and said 
to yourself, 'He's not doing anything.' 
I knew you were studying me, but baffled 
at every turn in attempts to do anything, 
I could do nothing but think of Avhat was 
needed to be done and of the results that 
would come from such action. 
i4i 



A MONTH AND A DAY WITH MUNSEY 

' ' Taking up the advertising end of the 
business : I do not oyerestimate my 
capacity to do for you in this line, for 
it is run in the most expensive and un- 
businessKke manner, and the results are 
far from what they should be. Advertise- 
ments are inserted without any order; 
conditional orders are accepted and the 
conditions not complied with; advertise- 
ments are charged at the wrong price and 
charged to irresponsible agents, etc., etc. 
— the general idea everywhere being to 
get through the day and take no thought 
of the morrow. 

" My judgment tells me that we would 
have just as much and more business if 
the agents and their solicitors and the 
advertisers were not seen so often. The 
principal reason why advertisers use 
your publications is because they have 
value. This is the thing that should be 
impressed upon advertisers by letter, by 
i42 



A MONTH AND A DAY WITH MUNSEY 

Circular, by an occasional personal call. 
Where friendship secures one order, 
merit, rate, and circulation bring twenty. 
Too much personal solicitation is annoy- 
ing to the advertiser and agent. This 
personal plea of asking advertisers and 
agents to send you advertisements to 
put money in your pocket is a false 
theory to work upon — every prominent 
advertiser and agent will tell you 
this. 

"I believe that both Mr. Barber and 
Mr. Clark gave you their honest opinion. 
Mr. Barber said in your words, ' If Mr. 
Thayer was at the head of your advertising 
department you would need to have no 
thought of it.' He meant this, and I am 
certain that he is right in the matter, for 
I managed an advertising department with 
an income of nearly a half million dollars, 
and there is no reason to think for one 
moment that when I left that department 
i43 



A MONTH AND A DAY WITH MUNSEY 

I also left mj brain, my sense, and my 
judgment in Philadelphia. 

' ' You didn't tell all that Mr. Clark said. 
When I told Mr. Clark, after my resigna- 
tion, that I had heard from you that he had 
said good things of me, he told me that 
you wouldn't tell me all he said. This 
was to the effect that I would do for you if 
I was given a chance — if you would let me 
do something. He also affirmed that I 
couldn't do anything, for you wouldn't let 
me. I went on to tell him that I didn't 
believe anything of the kind. I had been 
with two large concerns whose owners 
wanted to run everything, but I found that 
they were very willing to drop part of their 
labor on my shoulders. And when they 
discovered that I was a man who could 
assume responsibility, do things satisfac- 
torily and bring results, they were glad to 
have it so, for it made their mind free for 
other and more important things. 
i44 



A MONTH AND A DAY WITH MUNSEY 

"With you now, whether you beheve 
it or not, you are showing the strain of 
overwork. You will feel this more as 
time goes on, and you will have to 
drop it. What better thing could you 
do right now than to throw on me the 
advertising end of the business? You 
doubt my ability? If you have such 
doubts it is because your overworked 
brain leads you to doubt everyone. 
Your great business needs me much more 
than I thought it did. There is lots of 
work. Much time is wasted by lack of 
a little system, expensive salaries paid 
without proportionate results. 

"The salary of $7600 that you are 
paying me is meager, compared with the 
results that I could show at the end of the 
year. How much money did you lose last 
year in unpaid accounts ? Do you know ? 
You are aware of the fact that good judg- 
ment in this particular alone is worth at 
i45 



A MONTH AND A DAY WITH MUNSEY 

least twenty-five per cent of the amount 
you lost last year. 

' ' I should be false to my own honor, my 
loyalty to you, if at this time I should give 
up thoughts of making your success much 
greater. In the years to come I expect to 
see your great publishing house the first in 
the land, its fame world-wide. I antici- 
pate a success that will far surpass that of 
Sir George Newnes. At that time I will 
be glad to stand by your side as one of the 
faithful lieutenants who has done his part 
to bring this about. 

' ' Look around at the men who have 
overworked their brain — the result is 
always the same. You may have more 
power than any of them, and I believe that 
you have. There is a limit, however, to 
all power, all endurance. You will admit 
that Sir George Newnes has made a won- 
derful success. Take him for an example : 
Low has he done it? By looking after 
i46 



A MONTH AND A DAY WITH MUNSEY 

every department of his business? No, 
indeed. His advertising manager told me 
in London that when Sir George wanted 
to see him he gave him twentj-four hours' 
notice ; when he wanted to see Sir George 
he gave a week's notice and the appoint- 
ment was made. This could be called 
*red tape' ; it is carrying things too far. 

' ' I know that I can manage the adver- 
tising end of your business, perform all 
the functions of the business management 
to your entire satisfaction, but not, how- 
ever, unless you believe in me, in my 
worth, in my ability, in my judgment. 

"It is a necessity for you to have loyal 
lieutenants who understand business me- 
thods. Your business has grown so fast 
that you did not have time to educate 
young men. You have engaged me as a 
man who knows, without further education 
or training. There is lots to learn in your 
great big business . I am yet a young man ; 
i47 



A MONTH AND A DAY WITH MUNSEY 

I'm pliable and can change ways to meet 
the situation. You need the benefit of my 
education, my training, and my year's 
service will prove this to be true, and the 
' bright and brilliant ' men who think I 
have made a mistake in coming to you will 
hold a different opinion of the matter — 
will have a different opinion of the great 
personality whom I now hail ' Chief. ' 
"Faithfully, 
(Signed) "John Adams Thayer.** 

But my reply did not change the state 
of affairs. Mr. Munsey rejoined that he 
had given thirty days' long, deep, earnest 
thought to the problem before he wrote 
me. "Were you in fact a man of all the 
strength that your reputation gave you, 
with my estimate of your ability you would 
be so seriously handicapped that it would 
be impossible now for you to work out the 
problem here for which you came. " 
i48 



A MONTH AND A DAY WITH MUNSEY 

A few days after the passing of the 
letters I sat in Mr. Munsey's office, which 
was then on the eleventh story of the 
Constable Building, looking down on 
Fifth Avenue. It was raining. The flick- 
ering lights below, the hurrying cabs and 
people all told of the end of another busi- 
ness day. It was the end, too, of my term 
with Munsey, a milestone on the road of 
my career. After a long-continued con- 
versation we had reached a settlement. I 
was to give my resignation and receive a 
check for $2 Boo , and that I might go abroad, 
an order for one page of space in ' ' Munsey s 
Magazine," worth $5oo, and good for the 
advertisement of any steamship line. This 
was in addition to the salary I had drawn 
weekly. Financially, the settlement was 
satisfactory, but I was keenly disappointed 
to lose the year's service and its consequent 
experience. Mr. Munsey believes himself 
to be a close reasoner, and this, probably, 
149 



A MONTH AND A DAY WITH MUNSEY 

was the cause of his insisting, in defence 
of his arbitrary action : ' ' Thayer, I say 
again that I will do anything I can to help 
you. I hope you believe that I have treated 
you fairly. But I must reaffirm to you 
that you are not the strong man your friends 
represented you to be." I started to inter- 
rupt him, but he continued, *'Five years 
from now will prove it, whether you be- 
lieve it at this time or not." 

If you were a scratch golf player, and 
someone to belittle your knowledge of the 
game said that you and Colonel Bogey 
were eighteen holes apart, would you not 
feel indignant ? 

I was indignant. I jumped to my feet, 
raised the forefinger of my right hand, and 
looked him squarely in the face. Then, 
with the emphasis an energetic advertising 
man often uses to clinch an important deal, 
I told him that he had given me no oppor- 
tunity to do anything for him ; that he was 
i5o 



A MONTH AND A DAY WITH MUNSEY 

absolutely mistaken in his estimate of me. 
I closed the interview by assuring him, and 
the words came deliberately, that it would 
not take five years to prove him wrong. 
Handicapped though I might be by his 
action in forcing me out without a chance 
to show my ability, I would do it in less 
time. 



i5i 



CHAPTER EIGHT 
A Year with a Newspaper 




CHAPTER EIGHT 
A Year with a Newspaper 

|UT I did not go abroad. 
Indeed, I still have among 
my assets the order for a 
page of space in "Munsey's 
Magazine"; I toured New 
York's publishing houses instead, looking 
for another position. It was not a cheer- 
ing experience. For gossip, no village 
sewing circle can surpass the advertising 
fraternity of the American metropolis. A 
story will illustrate its possibilities. Two 
well-known advertising men agreed to say 
to the first magazine solicitor they met, 
' ' Have you heard that Mixon is to make 
a change?" Upon a reply in the negative, 
they were to add, "Well, if you haven't 
i55 



A YEAR WITH A NEWSPAPER 

heard of it, don't say anything about it." 
Each, it was understood, was to speak to 
but one person. Now Mixon held an 
enviable position. He had been for years 
the advertising manager of one of the big 
magazines, enjoyed a very handsome salary, 
and entertained no thought whatever of 
leaving so snug a berth. Suddenly he 
found his peace troubled. Forty-eight 
hours after the jokers dropped their seed 
on Broadway, it bore fruit in Chicago in 
the breast of a man who wanted to suc- 
ceed Mixon and wired to bespeak his 
influence. This was but a foretaste. The 
next few days showered him with con- 
gratulations, and his bewildered firm with 
inquiries and applications for the position 
he was to vacate. There was nothing 
vague or halfway about these statements. 
They had a ring of downright fact which 
his employers thought demanded explana- 
tion. In the upshot, the victim even felt it 
i56 



A YEAR WITH A NEWSPAPER 

necessary to announce in " Printer's Ink," 
an advertising journal, that the rumors 
were absolutely without foundation. 

Such conditions are more amusing to 
hear about than to confront, but facing 
the gossip myself, I took a Mark Tapley 
pride in being jolly under depressing cir- 
cumstances. I could put up well enough 
with the sorry-for-you tone of voice and 
the I-could-have-told-you-so friend, but it 
was less easy to learn that some people 
thought the great woman's magazine had 
made me, and that without it as a prop 
I was down and out. I had known men 
to leave good positions only to find them- 
selves worse off. But I would not admit 
that such was my case. In a dark moment, 
however, the thought did come to me 
that Mr. Munsey might be right in his 
estimate, and it startled me to such an 
extent that I put my head in my hands, 
as I had done many times before when the 
167 



A YEAR WITH A NEWSPAPER 

occasion was less serious, and fought the 
issue squarely to a finish. Reviewing 
the long struggle I had made, I could 
come to but one conclusion: I had been 
dumped out on my life's journey by an 
accident. I had misjudged not myself, 
but my vehicle. 

While I cast about for exactly the best 
opening, I deemed it best to ' ' get out of 
the wet," as the saying goes, and my 
umbrella took a form I had little antici- 
pated. My calls on the publishers and 
advertising men had been fruitless. My 
Munsey salary, which was known, seemed 
to stand as a bar, and no offers were 
forthcoming. In the vast quantity of 
information I collected in these rounds, 
however, I came across the serviceable 
hint that " The Boston Journal," a daily 
newspaper, needed an advertising manager. 
I cannot say I was tempted. Indeed, when 
I recalled my first newspaper experience, 
i58 



A YEAR WITH A NEWSPAPER 

it took courage to face the prospect at all. 
While I was in Philadelphia, as I have 
mentioned, I had several opportunities to 
become advertising manager for dailies, 
but I did not look favorably on such w^ork. 
That they appeared daily w^as one great 
drawback. Another, more vital, was the 
fact that they then thought nothing of 
running all sorts of patent medicine and 
objectionable advertising. 

But a newspaper was better than stag- 
nation, so off went a typewritten letter to 
Stephen O'Meara, who was the ' ' Journal's " 
publisher. In applying for the position I 
pointed out that there were some things, 
as yet untried by dailies, which could be 
pushed to success with a strong conservative 
paper such as his own . The advertisements 
could be set in a manner new to Boston ; 
they could be written more effectively ; they 
could be illustrated artistically — all with 
the aim of attracting the large drygoods 



A YEAR WITH A NEWSPAPER 

houses which, unHke Wanamaker's and 
the great firms of other cities, neglected to 
make adequate use of pubKcity . This letter 
appealed to Mr. O'Meara, as did my reply 
when, at a later conference, he broached 
the question of pay. I said frankly that I 
did not wish a big salary — just enough to 
live on would do ; but what I did want was 
a percentage of the increased business which 
I would bring to his paper. This suited 
him precisely, and I once more took up 
life in my old home. 

Naturally, I brought a fresh pair of eyes 
to bear upon my birthplace. Boston, as 
one of her noted sons has said, is unlike 
other great American cities. " Some of 
her institutions, through antiquity or asso- 
ciation, have acquired a positive sanctity. 
Pedigree is important. The average in- 
habitant spends much of his time watching 
the grandson of his neighbor's father to see 
the old man's characteristics crop out in 
i6o 



A YEAR WITH A NEWSPAPER 

him. The boy's failures will be remein- 
bered against his own offspring fifty years 
hence. It is a city of long memories and 
traditions." I now met this dead weight 
of the past at every turn. With "The 
Ladies' Home Journal" I had dealt with 
large advertisers, and I expected to reach 
a similar clientele here. But the pillars of 
Boston commerce were another race of 
beings altogether. As regards advertising, 
the great majority of drygoods merchants 
still dwelt in the Middle Ages. They put 
in a new elevator occasionally ; they now 
and then enlarged their stores ; but, pros- 
perous by Boston standards, they saw no 
reason why they should change their out- 
worn methods of advertising. Entrenched 
behind their Chinese Wall of indifference, 
1 found them as difficult to get at as the 
residents of Bar Harbor, who, in my one 
experience as a book agent, would neither 
see me nor the volume I had to sell. 
i6i 



A YEAR WITH A NEWSPAPER 

Finally, I drove an entering wedge with 
the house of Shepard, Norwell & Company. 
Mr. Edward E. Cole, the junior partner, 
a man of keen business caliber and old- 
school amiability, became interested in my 
ideas, and told me he had planned a similar 
innovation some time before with Mr. 
Lorin F. Deland, whose advertisements, 
though simple, were remarkably effective. 
Mr. Cole ordered a half-page advertisement 
to appear weekly for six months. I was 
not only to advise and suggest, but write 
and illustrate the items in any manner I 
saw fit. In pursuance of this plan I would 
even take hats and garments of various 
sorts from the store for an artist to sketch 
before I wrote my own copy. With this 
beginning one would think, as I thought, 
that other firms would prove easily acces- 
sible, but such was not the case. Often 
the heads of houses refused to see me at 
all, and the one chance I had of talking to 
162 



A YEAR WITH A NEWSPAPER 

perhaps the most prominent of them was 
obtained by standing guard till he issued 
from his private office. I approached him, 
stopped when he stopped, walked on when 
he walked, and so, following him round 
his great establishment as he made a journey 
to a distant department, I put my argument 
as best I could. He would hardly listen 
and kept referring me to his advertising 
manager, a man without power, on whom 
1 had already wasted many hours. Know- 
ing that his prejudice against my paper 
had its source in an offensive news item, 
I pointed out that years had elapsed since 
it appeared; that the "Journal" was 
under entirely new management and, a 
stronger medium in every way, would 
bring him sure returns for his advertising 
if he would only try it. It was no use. 
This was Boston of the long memory. 
He could not, even for profit, forgive 
the paper which long ago exploited the 
i63 



A YEAR WITH A NEWSPAPER 

news that his son had married without 
his consent. 

But I had been in similar predicaments 
and had no doubt of the outcome. I re- 
membered an amended proverb quoted 
by a former employer : ' ' All things come 
round to him who will but wait" — if he 
hustles while he waits. My task was to 
build up such a medium as would compel 
people to advertise. I had already abol- 
ished the black, inartistic type used by 
other Boston dailies for headings and ad- 
vertisements, and the new faces wrought 
a great improvement in our typographical 
appearance. But I realized that something 
more unusual than this must be done to 
acquaint advertisers with the fact that the 
"Journal" had taken on a new lease of 
life and energy. It has fallen to me more 
than once in my experience to hit on ideas 
in advance of the times, and the proposi- 
tion it now occured to me to employ was 
i64 



A YEAR WITH A NEWSPAPER 

one which later became very popular, and 
under the name of Sunday Supplement, is 
a feature of many newspapers in America. 
I suggested to Mr. O'Meara that he reduce 
the ' ' Sunday Journal" to half its size, and 
using a larger type and better paper, make 
it in effect a weekly magazine, with the news 
of the world thrown in for good measure. 
He began to smile, as I continued, and took 
from a drawer of his desk a showing of 
half the Sunday issue in the form I advo- 
cated. He was pleased that he had antici- 
pated my suggestion by a year or more, 
and as this made my own way easier, I 
was no less glad. Few men of ideas get 
anywhere in this world unless they harness 
power to their originality. The valuable 
idea is the idea which — in the expressive 
slang of the day- — delivers the goods. 

So it was that, barring the news section, 
the Sunday paper was halved in size and 
doubled in quantity of pages. The type 
i65 



A YEAR WITH A NEWSPAPER 

and paper did not conform to my plan, 
but we had taken the step, which was the 
main thing. Following up the campaign, 
I urged Mr. O'Meara to publish daily the 
figures of our growing circulation. To 
this he demurred, saying that we would 
suffer by comparison with the grossly over- 
stated statement of the "Boston Herald." 
But just here seemed to me our oppor- 
tunity. His knowledge of the ' ' Herald's " 
real standing being exact, I persuaded him 
to offer to give $1000 or so to some 
hospital if our rival could prove to a 
selected committee of advertisers that its 
circulation came within fifty thousand of 
its printed claims. This appealed to him, 
and we were soon in the thick of a circu- 
lation war with the battery all on our side. 
The breastworks of the enemy were soon 
leveled by the pungent editorials for which 
Stephen O'Meara was noted, and not long 
afterward, with a change of management, 
166 



A YEAR WITH A NEWSPAPER 

the colors fell too, and the circulation 
figures were withdrawn. 

This controversy and the change in size 
proved most effective. Circulation in- 
creased and orders for advertising so multi- 
plied that one Sunday, in addition to many 
columns of smaller advertisements, I mar- 
shaled eleven full-page announcements of 
local houses. As the receipts naturally 
showed a healthy growth of several thou- 
sand dollars each week, I deemed the time 
ripe to ask my chief to put our scheme 
through in its entirety. But Boston con- 
servatism once more blocked the march of 
progress. He was gratified with my work, 
but stronger than his ambition to see the 
"Journal" use better paper, larger type, 
and modern illustrations, was his wish to 
repay his friends some of the money they 
had advanced him to secure control of the 
property. My argument that they were 
wealthy, had no need of the money, and 
167 



A YEAR WITH A NEWSPAPER 

would beyond doubt approve of the change 
was of no avail. He agreed in theory, but 
balked at practice. 

In two other things I met disappoint- 
ment. I wanted to see advertisements 
take their proper place at the bottom of 
the page, instead of alongside reading 
matter at the top in the clumsy fashion to 
which Boston still clung ; and I longed 
for authority to turn all objectionable 
advertisements from the door. But these 
policies involved decreased receipts for an 
indefinite period, and decreased receipts, 
though they meant an up-to-date publica- 
tion, were unpopular in the counting 
room. I made the best of the situation, 
hoping presently to see a loophole for 
further reform, but the future, instead of 
accommodating me, produced the Spanish 
War. This event, while not materially 
affecting Boston, made a vast difference in 
the plans of general advertisers, and with 
i68 



A YEAR WITH A NEWSPAPER 

the cancellation of orders of this class, I 
found that my successful local work merely 
stopped the gap of a deficit. After the 
battle of Santiago, the general advertising 
returned, and this, coupled with my local 
business, plainly indicated that if I could 
renew my contract on the same terms, my 
second year would net me a handsome 
income. When the matter came up for 
discussion, however, I was again made to 
realize that I dwelt in the city of sanctified 
traditions. I was told that for the year to 
come I must be limited to $7600, which 
was "a good salary for Boston." This 
final example of conservatism so disgusted 
me that I resigned on the spot. 

A half hour in my own office, with my 
head in my hands, altered my point of 
view. I again went upstairs and with a 
smiling countenance said I had thought 
the matter over and concluded that, after 
months of hard work, day and night, I 
169 



A YEAR WITH A NEWSPAPER 

was tired out. If he approved, I would 
withdraw my resignation and take a vaca- 
tion. Mr. O'Meara readily assented, as I 
felt sure he would, and I went to Cuba. 

Vacations have properly slight relevance 
to this story of a business career, but as 
on this particular outing I for once saw 
history in the making, it perhaps deserves 
a digression. Arriving in Havana on the 
afternoon of December 3i, 1898, the day 
before Spain surrendered the island, I 
presented to Major-General Ludlow a letter 
of introduction from the son of one of his 
close friends, and asked for a pass which 
would enable Mrs. Thayer and myself to 
see the next day's ceremonies at the palace. 
He referred me to his Adjutant-General, 
who was with him at the time, and the 
pass was presently forthcoming. I was 
unaware that President McKinley, out of 
consideration for Spain, had cabled in- 
structions that the ceremonies should not 
170 



A YEAR WITH A NEWSPAPER 

be public, only the militia and two Press 
representatives to be witnesses ; and in the 
same ignorance I set out the following day 
for the palace. American troops guarded 
the building, but the general's pass took 
us by without delay in the wake of a group 
of gentlemen in evening dress. Following 
their lead, we entered, by mistake, a side 
entrance of the palace, and to our surprise 
found ourselves in the private apartments 
of Governor-General Castellanos. Know- 
ing no Spanish, I could only extend my 
pass to his secretary, but the card worked 
its immediate magic, and amidst bows from 
the assembled suite, which made our way 
seem like a royal progress, we were ushered 
to the throne room. This great chamber 
Ave found tenanted only by ourselves, but 
as we glanced from its immense windows 
into the plaza we saw on a near building 
a group of Americans, among whom we 
identified the wives of generals, senators, 
171 



A YEAR WITH A NEWSPAPER 

and other notables who chanced at that 
time to be in Cuba. Believing now that 
a mistake had certainly been made, I dis- 
played my pass to a gentleman in a won- 
derful uniform and was assured in musical 
Spanish, of which I understood not a 
syllable, supplemented by gestures as plain 
as English print, that our location for the 
ceremonies was absolutely perfect. So it 
proved. I looked at my watch. It was 
five minutes to twelve. At that instant 
rose the solemn strains of the Spanish 
anthem. As it ceased there was a mo- 
ment's silence. Then up through the 
casements came the Star Spangled Banner, 
and the procession, which had formed be- 
low, wound its way through the great 
portal and up into the room where we 
were. Major-General Brooke, and the 
officers under his command, their dress 
uniforms and yellow sashes a bright note 
of color, entered first; then came the 
172 



A YEAR WITH A NEWSPAPER 

swarthy Cuban leaders, their uniforms 
less splendid, but their dignity beyond 
question ; and last of all, General Gaste- 
Uanos and his staff. The scene was too 
painful to prolong. A moment of formali- 
ties and it was over, and the defeated said 
farewell. It was an ordeal for a man of 
Gastellanos' temperament. Tears came to 
his eyes. ' ' I have been in many battles," 
he faltered, " many trying situations, but 
never in a position like this." Then, as 
we watched, the little handful of Spanish 
troops, headed only by fife and drum, set 
their faces towards Spain. The drama 
which began with Golumbus was finished. 
Returning to my desk, I took up work 
again wdth my old-time energy, but hav- 
ing by now gaged the possibilities of 
Boston, I worked with an eye open for 
another position elsewhere. It was not 
long in appearing. Just at this time Mr. 
George W. Wilder obtained control of the 

173 



1 



A YEAR WITH A NEWSPAPER 

Butterick Publishing Company, a million- 
dollar concern in New York, manufactur- 
ing paper dress patterns and publishing a 
monthly periodical called ' ' The Deline- 
ator." This great enterprise, of which his 
father had been the brains, had through 
mismanagement fallen into a bad way, 
but by hard work Mr. Wilder and his 
brothers finally purchased the stock in- 
terest of Ebenezer Butterick and secured 
the direction of its destinies. Casting 
about for an advertising man, he consulted 
the advertising naanager of the American 
Tobacco Company, who, at Mr. Wilder's 
suggestion, wrote to ask if I would enter- 
tain an oflFer. He was, he remarked, look- 
ing not for the most brilliant man in the 
business, but an honest one; a require- 
ment that shed a certain light on the task 
with which that man would have to cope. 
A few days afterwards I went to New 
York, and a brief interview settled my 
174 



A YEAR WITH A NEWSPAPER 

engagement. Our plans we threshed out 
a week later at Mr. Wilder' s country home, 
Cheshire Place, in the New Hampshire 
hills, where I pointed out to him the great 
possibilities I saw in *'The Delineator," 
and showed him the first real rate-card 
which that sadly bungled periodical was 
to possess. 



175 






CHAPTER NINE 
Bleaching a Black Sheep 



CHAPTER NINE 
Bleaching a Black Sheep 




;EORGE WARREN WILDER, 

the real head of the Butterick 
Company, has a sense of hu- 
mor. Returning from lunch 
with him and some of the 
staff one day soon after I became his ad- 
vertising manager, I was escorted to a pair 
of Fairbanks' scales in the shipping depart- 
ment. With solemn mien my new chief 
indicated that my weight was to be taken, 
and after prolonged adjustments of the 
various digits, it was as gravely announced 
that I tipped the beam at one hundred and 
eighty-eight pounds. Whereupon leaving 
the other witnesses of this rite behind, he 
took my arm, led me by devious ways to 
179 



BLEACHING A BLACK SHEEP 

an obscure, seldom-used office, and care- 
fully closing the door, turned the key. 

"You have been here long enough," he 
said, his face all seriousness, "to know 
that the advertising department of ' The 
Delineator' has been grossly mismanaged. 
We have had no fixed rate. For years 
advertisers and advertising agents have 
had no confidence in us. We lack char- 
acter. Now^ I believe you will remedy 
this, for I am told that you are the very 
man in the advertising world who can do 
it best and do it quickest. It means much 
to me, for I have great plans for enlarging 
this business. You will have a very hard 
job to bleach this black sheep of ours, but 
it will be worth while." Then, his blue 
eyes lighting with amusement, he added 
with a smile : * ' Forget your weight taken 
to-day. You're going to lose a lot of it." 

I found the sheep not only as black 
as he had stated, but unsound in bodj 
i8o 



BLEACHING A BLACK SHEEP 

in other ways for which, as an advertising 
man, I had scarcely expected to prescribe. 
During my days in the New Hampshire 
hills, I had blue-printed the possibilities 
of the future so strongly on Mr. Wilder s 
mind that that ever-active organ demanded 
prompt and tangible results, but these 
involved more than increased advertising 
receipts. Better printing, better illustra- 
tions, improved typography, attractive 
front-cover pages, and logically, a larger 
circulation, were all imperative. In all 
these matters, outside my province, I 
assisted materially, and the selection of 
the circulation manager and his assistant, 
the art director, and the foreman of the 
composing room where our advertisements 
were set, also devolved upon me in the 
course of my service. It was natural for 
Mr. Wilder to advise with me in these 
affairs, for his own knowledge of the 
publishing business was meager, but my 
i8i 



BLEACHING A BLACK SHEEP 

all-round zeal brought down on me the 
displeasure of the heads of other depart- 
ments, who could not make out why an 
advertising man should suggest and push 
to completion ideas which did not pertain 
to his specialty. They did not know that 
my knowledge of publishing included 
every branch of the business, and I had 
no occasion to explain. Of the paper 
pattern department — familiar to the women 
of countless households — I had no knowl- 
edge. Nor did I seek it. I believed that 
if I concentrated my abilities on the 
problems of publication, Mr. Wilder's 
hopes would be the sooner realized. 

Meanwhile, I had my particular share 
of the black sheep to look after. Of my 
association of nearly four years with the 
Butterick Company, the first twelve months 
were at once the most difficult and the 
most interesting. My arrangement ran 
that, if I increased the advertising receipts 
182 



BLEACHING A BLACK SHEEP 

by $5o,ooo during the first year, my salary 
should be $10,000, but, this incentive 
aside, I realized that the plans for enlarging 
the business made a larger income from 
this special source of high importance. 
With a circulation of nearly half a million 
monthly, "The Delineator" had been 
issued primarily as a catalogue of its pat- 
tern industry, and its advertising receipts, 
w^hich at the time of my coming averaged 
$i36,ooo a year, were merely incidental . 

It is very difficult to establish a fixed 
price for advertising in a publication w^hich 
has never had one, but this vs^as what I now 
had to do. The advertising agents of 
America who handled the business which 
was worth while had lost all confidence in 
' ' The Delineator," but they knew me, and 
when I announced that the rate was now 
two dollars to all comers they showed their 
faith to a man. Perhaps I should say, 
except one man. There was a Doubting 
i83 



BLEACHING A BLACK SHEEP 

Thomas who, holding the magazine's past 
in sore remembrance, could not believe his 
ears, and requested me to put the amazing 
new doctrine in black and white. He had 
lost many orders in the past because of the 
dickering and cutting which had prevailed, 
and wanted a letter guaranteeing him a 
rebate if he could prove, after sending us 
business, that any other advertiser or agent 
had secured a lower price. I not only gave 
him the guarantee he asked, but offered 
him access to our books, files, and corre- 
spondence should he harbor suspicion in 
the future. I had never met the man or 
dealt with him in any way, but my letter 
convinced him and he became a constant 
client thereafter. 

Once made, I kept the rate as rigid as 
the laws of the Medes and the Persians, 
disappoint whom it might. This some- 
times had humorous consequences. Per- 
haps a month after I took hold of the 
1 84 



BLEACHING A BLACK SHEEP 

department I received a letter from Mr. 
Charles E. Raymond, the Chicago manager 
of the advertising agency of the J. Walter 
Thompson Company, enclosing an order 
for one of his customers at the old rate. 
He explained that, on account of absence 
from the city, he had neglected to send it 
before or v\^rite me concerning it ; and as 
Mr. Raymond was then, as he is still, a 
dependable man in his field, I knew he 
wrote the truth. It was important that no 
exceptions be made, however, and I accord- 
ingly replied that I knew he was acting in 
good faith, and that under ordinary cir- 
cumstances his order would be accepted, 
but the advertising department of ' ' The 
Delineator " had such a dubious past that 
I would do nothing to stir even a breath of 
suspicion in the future. I closed with a 
reference to the man who lived so upright 
a life that he leaned backwards, saying 
that, while I did not want to appear to play 
i85 



BLEACHING A BLACK SHEEP 

that role, conditions were such that I must 
dechne his order. Mr. Raymond's laconic 
answer ran : ' ' Dear Sir, — You are leaning 
backwards." 

A curious paradox of this question is the 
fact that, although it is suicidal for a pub- 
lisher to have more than one price for 
advertising of the same kind, it is yet 
possible for a publication to contain in the 
same issue announcements of three adver- 
tisers all charged at a different rate. A 
rise in circulation naturally involves a 
better rate, but a notice of an intended 
increase is customary, and up to a specific 
date the publisher will take orders to run 
a year at the ruling price. Sometimes a 
publisher is forced to take such action 
oftener than yearly, with a corresponding 
shortening of the time allowance, and so 
it fell out that during my connection with 
"The Ladies' Home Journal," "The 
Delineator," and later with " Everybody's 
i86 



BLEACHING A BLACK SHEEP 

Magazine, " there would be advertisements 
at different rates in a single issue, though 
the periodicals were on an absolutely one- 
price basis to all. 

The end of the first year found the rate 
firmly established, but the receipts of my 
department, owing to my war on the ob- 
jectionable advertisement of which I shall 
speak in detail later, fell $7000 short of 
the expected increase of $5o,ooo. But 
I was highly pleased with our showing 
notwithstanding, for "The Delineator" 
was unmistakably on the upward march. 
Moreover, my work gained me the maxi- 
mum salary after all. The undesirable 
advertising I had refused was taken into 
account, for, as one of the firm pointed 
out, there was no reason why I should be 
punished for working for the best interests 
of the business. 

During all this time I had in the back 
of my head the intention to get my old- 
187 



I 



BLEACHING A BLACK SHEEP 

time friend and co-worker of ' ' The Ladies* 
Home Journal " to assist me. I needed 
the strongest possible man in the West, 
and that man, beyond a shadow of a 
doubt, was Thomas Balmer. But how 
should I persuade Mr. Wilder to add to 
my staff an assistant who would demand 
a salary equal to my own? The right 
opportunity seldom fails to come to one 
who can curb his impatience and bide his 
time. I recognized the "psychological 
moment," which novelists are so fond 
of mentioning, as I sat, fishing-rod in 
hand, on the bank of a pond at Cheshire 
Place. 

" I'm going to get a stronger man in 
the West very soon," I dropped as casually 
as if it were a mere question of bait. 

"Are you?" said my host. "Who is 
he?" 

' ' Thomas Balmer. The strongest ad- 
vertising man in the world." 
i88 



BLEACHING A BLACK SHEEP 

' ' What ! ' ' smiled Mr . Wilder . "I 
thought you were it. " 

I assured him that Mr. Balmer had no 
equal as a result getter, and was un- 
doubtedly what I had just said, — the 
greatest man in the business. With this 
opening I proceeded to outline his progress 
as Western manager of ' ' The Ladies' 
Home Journal," and the innovations for 
which the advertising world in general 
was his debtor. The question of cost 
followed, and I said that while I knew he 
had declined many big-salaried oflFers, I 
believed I could get him to come to us for 
my own salary if he might have the same 
increase when he proved himself worth it. 
Whereupon Mr. Wilder interrupted : 
"Let's go over to that other pond. 
There's more fish there. " 

With the requisite authority I left New 
Hampshire the next morning, happy in 
the thought that I was sure of a stanch 
189 



BLEACHING A BLACK SHEEP 

ally in the special reform I had so close 
at heart. Even more serious to me in 
the bleaching process than the rate was 
the question of quality. As much as the 
company needed greater receipts and as 
I wanted to earn my maximum salary, I 
could at no time tolerate the thought of 
any compromise with my arch-enemy, the 
objectionable advertisement. I longed to 
drive it, not only from our own magazines, 
but, if I could, from the printed page 
everywhere. More than any other pro- 
fessional ambition, I wanted to see 
American advertising clean. 



190 



CHAPTER TEN 
The Fight for Glean ADTBRxisine 







CHAPTER TEN 

The Fight for Glean Advertising 

I HEN in the regeneration of 
"The Delineator's" adver- 
tising department, I faced 
the question of quaHty, I 
lost no time debating a 
poHcy. The only course I could pursue 
w^as the one to which I had so far consist- 
ently adhered: all patent medicine, ob- 
jectionable and doubtful matter must be 
declined. But where draw the line? 
Fraudulent advertising is objectionable 
always, but objectionable advertising is 
not always fraudulent. There are grades 
in advertising matter as in conduct. Black 
and white are easily distinguished; it is 
with the grays that doubt comes. 
193 



THE FIGHT FOR CLEAN ADVERTISING 

It happened that one of these neutral 
cases arose soon after my coming, and I 
saw in it a chance for an object lesson 
more forcible than a Niagara of verbal 
argument. There turned up one day an 
order for a hair restorer, an advertisement 
which had found "The Delineator" a 
friendly medium for years. I decided to 
decline this order, but I wanted the com- 
pany to know what I was doing; the 
official I picked out to consult was bald. 
As I put before him the large advertise- 
ment of the hair restorer, with its *' Be- 
fore" and "After" cuts of a man as ill- 
thatched as himself, I told him that the 
order amounted to $3ooo ; that we had 
space for it; that it had run for many 
years past. I added that to me, however, 
it seemed a grave error to accept it unless 
it could do the things it promised. 

"Do you believe in such things?" I 
asked. 



THE FIGHT FOR GLEAN ADVERTISING 

"I!" he exclaimed. "Do you think 
that if there was a remedy, I d have 
stayed bald for thirty years?" 

In carrying out this policy, I had a most 
invaluable assistant in Mr. Balmer, who, 
with his high ideals , was naturally in sym- 
pathy with the idea. There was nothing 
halfway about our reform . It struck clear 
to the root of the evil. Many advertisers 
promised impossible values for trivial 
amounts, and it was not long before we 
announced that not only patent medicines 
and objectionable advertisements would 
be declined, but all which were extrava- 
gantly phrased. Thus an assertion that a 
lady's suit worth seventy-five dollars would 
be sent on receipt of twenty-five dollars in 
cash would be considered ' ' extravagantly 
phrased" and the order declined, unless 
personal examination proved its truth. 
It is difficult to explain to the layman the 
detail with which every announcement 
195 



THE FIGHT FOR CLEAN ADVERTISING 

was censored. The word " cure" had to 
be stricken from every advertisement be- 
fore it appeared in our columns. If a 
well-known make of vaseline was said to 
"cure" sunburn, we obtained the adver- 
tiser's consent to change the word to 
"relieve," or declined his money. In 
our printed communications to clients, 
as well as in the magazine itself, we 
enlarged upon what we were doing in this 
line, and made a bid solely for high-grade 
advertising. It came in good volume. So 
much so, in fact, that the close of our 
second year saw our total income from 
this source nearly $100,000 more than 
the year before. 

But, as I have intimated, my crusade 
in this cause embraced a wider field than 
the columns of "The Delineator." I 
wanted to see this much needed purge 
universal. Nearly all the general maga- 
zines inserted advertisements of liquors, 
196 



THE FIGHT FOR GLEAN ADVERTISING 

patent medicines, and other matter as 
questionable, and with the exception of 
the "Saturday EA^ening Post," pubKshed 
by Gyrus Curtis, the weekhes were also 
transgressors, the religious organs in some 
cases out-Heroding their secular contempo- 
raries in guilt. The chief sinners of all 
were the great daily newspapers, many 
of which carried advertisements grossly 
fraudulent. I was characterized as a 
drastic reformer in my efforts to suppress 
some of this shameless trading on the sick 
and feeble-minded, and I daresay I deserved 
both the title and the epithet. Certainly, 
wherever I saw an offending head I hit it. 
My great opportunity came when I was 
asked to speak on any topic I chose before 
the Sphinx Club, an association of men 
devoted to various advertising interests. 
I delivered this address at the Waldorf- 
Astoria, October 8, 1902. My subject, 
illustrated by stereopticon slides, was 
197 



THE FIGHT FOR CLEAN ADVERTISING 

* * Should a Publisher Accept Fraudulent 
and Objectionable Advertising?" 

The daily newspapers furnished me w^ith 
sufficient ammunition. Of the numerous 
humbugs they had helped foist upon the 
public I chose three conspicuous examples 
for comment: the ' ' divine healer, " Francis 
Truth ; the so-called Lucky Box ; and 
' 'Five-hundred-and-twenty-per-cent 
Miller. The exploits of these charlatans 
are doubtless graven deep in the minds of 
their victims, but the general memory is a 
thing of wax, and it will do no harm briefly 
to recapitulate these outrageous swindles 
at which so many newspapers of America 
connived. 

It is the press of New England which 
should bear the odium of Francis Truth's 
shameless success. This quack, schooled 
to unusual cunning among fakirs of the 
most dangerous type, easily found com- 
plaisant publishers to print his advertise- 
198 



THE FIGHT FOR CLEAN ADVERTISING 

ments, headlines and all, in the guise of 
news. Thanks to their trumpeting of his 
miraculous "cures," he established him- 
self luxuriously in one of Boston's best 
sections and surrounded himself with 
scores of clerks who, with series of mani- 
folded letters, "treated" the stricken and 
deluded thousands who could not flock 
directly to his door. To those who did 
come he showed a trophy room decorated 
with discarded canes, crutches, and braces. 
Among these convincing relics were also 
displayed the charred ends of many expen- 
sive cigars, for even the smoking habit 
came within the range of his divine activi- 
ties. When the crash came, the office boy 
testified that these stumps had been smoked 
by the Healer himself after his exhausting 
labors for ailing humanity. But there were 
profits before the crash; ten months of 
profits, which accumulated at the astound- 
ing figure of $3o,ooo a week. Then 
199 



THE FIGHT FOR CLEAN ADVERTISING 

Francis Truth was placed under arrest. 
The pubKshers escaped. 

Intellectual Boston, the haven of all 
cranks and "isms," was also the friendly 
nursery of that monumental fake, Parker's 
"Three Star Ring Lucky Box." This 
talisman, which cost less than a cent to 
manufacture and sold for ninety-nine, was 
made of wood and contained a suspended 
brass ring bearing three stars. The first 
advertisement announced that "Boston 
was mystified." Trust Boston! It fur- 
thermore stated that hundreds had been 
made happy. Its heading was similar to 
that of a regular news story, and as news 
it undoubtedly passed with careless thou- 
sands. As the superstitious paid in their 
money and the swindle thrived, two- 
column announcements detailed the won- 
ders it had worked. A woman lost her 
valuable watch ; ninety-nine cents invested 
in a lucky box recovered it. A ship went 
200 



THE FIGHT FOR GLEAN ADVERTISING 

down in fifteen fathoms of water ; the sole 
survivor carried a hickj box. The happy 
possessor of another lifted the mortgage 
on his home- — lifted it with the box. A 
Wall Street operator wanted a tip in a 
panic, a poor man wanted a job, a girl 
wanted to go to the Paris Exposition, a 
spinster wanted a husband — the lucky 
box brought them all their heart's desire. 
The lame threw away their crutches, the 
drunkard forsook his cups, nothing was 
impossible — in the advertisements! The 
crowning stroke of knavery was the injunc- 
tion : " Successful people with health and 
wealth are requested not to send for any 
more boxes, as Mr. Parker prefers to de- 
liver the remaining lot to those who are in 
greater need of this world's goods." Over 
seventy-five thousand of these boxes were 
sold, and when the postal authorities in- 
tervened twenty thousand letters still 
awaited delivery. The newspaper pub- 

20I 



THE FIGHT FOR GLEAN ADVERTISING 

Ushers of the Modern Athens, who ran 
this advertising, shared in the loot at the 
rate of $3.5o per inch. 

W. F. Miller spread a still wider net. 
He began his financial career with a ten 
dollar bill loaned him by two friends. 
He ended it — after handling milHons — 
in State's prison. Through the newspapers 
of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and 
other cities he held out the glittering bait 
of ten per cent a week on an investment 
of twenty dollars. And he paid it — for 
a while. The timid pioneers who sent 
him their little capital found themselves 
drawing the astounding interest of 520 per 
cent, and every man-jack of them became, 
on a five per cent basis, a willing agent to 
coax others to send their savings to this 
wizard with the Midas touch. The ad- 
vertisements continued, the money poured 
in. One week saw $70,000 withdrawn 
from Boston and Philadelphia savings 
202 



THE FIGHT FOR CLEAN ADVERTISING 

banks to swell the flood which at high tide 
reached a mark not far from $3, 000,000. 
Miller's press agent styled him a Napoleon 
of Finance. His scheme was certainly 
Napoleonic in its audacity. Nothing could 
be more simple. He paid the dividends 
out of the principal. 

Advertising, and advertising alone, made 
Miller and Parker and Truth possible. 
Unabetted by the press, they would never 
have risen from the obscure ranks of the 
thimble riggers and the adepts at three card 
monte. And it is not the publishers who 
need the money who print such advertising ; 
it is not ofiered to them. It is the paper 
of good standing, large circulation, and 
high advertising rates which gets the busi- 
ness and, open-eyed, becomes party to 
the fraud. 

A bill, introduced recently in the Massa- 
chusetts Legislature, to prohibit the publi- 
cation of certain paid matter in newspapers 
2o3 



THE FIGHT FOR GLEAN ADVERTISING 

unless marked as an advertisement will be 
a corrective of many similar frauds . 

Like others who attempt to remedy 
existing evils, I found myself in advance 
of the times. Nothing showed this more 
plainly than the dilEculties I now met in 
trying to form a society for the suppres- 
sion of fraudulent and objectionable ad- 
vertising. Prominent men, identified with 
advertising, when asked to serve on the 
board of directors, regretted that they had 
not sufficient time. Others declined for 
the reason that they knew there were other 
men better able to cope with the situation . 
I vigorously advocated the formation of this 
society, engaged a secretary, and personally 
met the contingent expenses, but disap- 
pointed at the lack of interest shown, and 
finding it required too much of the time 
which I felt belonged to my employer, I 
reluctantly put the idea aside. 

But the fight itself I did not abandon. 
2o4 



THE FIGHT FOR GLEAN ADVERTISING 

If I could not raise a regiment, I could at 
least do my part as an independent sharp- 
shooter. I accordingly stood rigidly by 
my creed in practice, and by letter and 
word of mouth did what I could to win 
oyer the publishers of other periodicals. 
This private campaign had one striking 
result. Among the letters I sent out was 
one to " Collier's Weekly." It was of the 
"Constant Reader" brand, which some- 
times has an influence with a publisher. 
It ran : "I see ' Collier's ' every week and 
I find in it patent medicine and other ad- 
vertisements which ' The Ladies' Home 
Journal ' and ' The Delineator ' do not 
insert. Why do you accept such ad^^er- 
tising? I am sure you do not need the 
money." A Philadelphia man fathered 
the communication, and the response, duly 
forwarded to me, was cheering. " Upon 
receipt of your letter," it read, "I called 
our advertising staff together, and we have 
2o5 



THE FIGHT FOR GLEAN ADVERTISING 

decided, as soon as certain contracts are 
completed, to discontinue the insertion of 
such advertising." The letter vs^as signed 
by Robert Collier, the brilliant son of the 
founder of this great house. Occupied as 
editor, this advertising phase had not been 
seriously considered by him. He needed 
but this word of mine to set him thinking. 
Filled with crusading zeal himself, Mr. 
Collier not only drove every doubtful ad- 
vertisement from the pages of his famous 
weekly, but enlisting the trained intelli- 
gence of Mr. Samuel Hopkins Adams, 
printed the series of articles entitled ' ' The 
Great American Fraud." These, com- 
bined with the vigorous attack made by 
*'The Ladies' Home Journal," dealt patent 
medicine advertising the severest blow it 
ever received. 



ao6 



CHAPTER ELEVEN 
My Master Stroke in Advertising 



CHAPTER ELEVEN 
Mt Master Stroke in Advertising 




HE Cinderella-like transfor- 
mation of * ' The Delineator" 
gave me many knots to untie, 
and I count my handling of 
one of them the master stroke 
of my advertising career. It was not — 
as might be imagined — a contract for 
advertising space footing up into many 
thousands of dollars. Contracts of from 
six to twelve pages of space were not 
unusual. This, on the contrary, was 
the cancellation of an order, and its story 
— with its sidelight on the business 
methods of two kindred yet widely dis- 
similar nations — is not uninteresting. 
About five years before my engagement, 
209 



MY MASTER STROKE IN ADVERTISING 

the Butterick Company entered into a con- 
tract with a well-known English soap 
company for back-cover advertising in 
" The Delineator" and a pattern catalogue 
or two, this space to be paid for quarterly 
on the basis of about six shillings per 
thousand circulation, the latter to be 
guaranteed under oath. Two years before 
my coming, the contract had been renewed 
for three years, with an option for still 
three more at the same price. Anyone 
can understand that with a circulation of 
five hundred thousand at six shillings per 
thousand the amount of money thus re- 
ceived for the back cover would be about 
$75o. But here was a virtually new 
"Delineator," a well-printed and well- 
made publication, with page space twice 
the size of the ordinary magazine, and 
therefore qualified to ask twice the amount 
which the ordinary magazine of equal 
circulation could demand. 

2IO 



MY MASTER STROKE IN ADVERTISING 

Upon learning of this contract with its 
ill-advised mortgage on the future, I took 
the matter up with the officers of the com- 
pany, and a letter was dispatched to the 
London offices to see what could be done. 
Nothing was accomplished, however, for 
the London representative was not an ad- 
vertising man, and when he broached the 
question, it was put in such a maladroit 
way that the managing director of the 
company declined to cancel any part of 
the order. Realizing how detrimental it 
would be to our interests to have such a 
long-time contract on our books , I arranged 
to sail for the other side. I had met the 
managing director on a previous trip 
abroad, and knowing that there was really 
only one way of doing business in Lon- 
don, I decided to play the game strictly 
according to English rules. 

My first call on him, therefore, was at 
a time when I knew he would not be in 

2X1 



MY MASTER STROKE IN ADVERTISING 

his office. I left a card with the name of 
my hotel, the exclusive Carlton, which I 
had decided to patronize because I remem- 
bered that it had a place in his affec- 
tions. Two days later I received a letter 
from his secretary asking me to call the 
next day at five o'clock. I suppose my 
call extended over an hour. We talked of 
London, of English art, English cathedrals, 
English weather — of course — but of the 
purpose of my visit not a word. Just as 
I was about to go, I casually mentioned 
that before leaving for Paris I should like 
to take up a business matter with him, and 
asked for an appointment. He as casually 
regretted that as he was leaving in about 
a week on a fishing trip he feared he could 
make no appointment. Finally, however, 
he so far sacrificed his sacred routine as to 
ask me to come in the next day. I was 
prompt and brief. First telling him of my 
work with "The Delineator," and of the 

212 



MY MASTER STROKE IN ADVERTISING 

great strides that had already been made, 
I added that I found myself handicapped 
in my progress because I could not give 
an American advertiser any of the back- 
cover pages. 

"What do you want me to do?" he 
asked. 

I thereupon explained that since Mr. 
Wilder's son had secured control of the 
company he had enlarged its scope materi- 
ally by the purchase of a competing com- 
pany, which likewise published a magazine 
for women. Would he not be willing to 
give up six pages of *'The Delineator" 
and use pages in the other publication 
instead ? 

"Will this assist you personally?" he 
asked, 

"Yes," I said. 

" Then rU doit." 

I cabled my office that evening, and a 
3x3 



MY MASTER STROKE IN ADVERTISING 

few days later in Paris word came that 
the first page thus vacated had been 
sold to another advertiser for $1200. 
But there still remained the ill-starred 
option. Waiting till the existing contract 
had nearly run its term, I brought up 
the question of its renewal in a letter 
to the manager, in which I took pains 
to state that I had looked *up the amount 
of money he had paid us for adver- 
tising, and was surprised to learn that 
it amounted to over $100,000. I rea- 
soned, of course, that when his con- 
servative British eye fell upon this good 
round sum he would feel constrained to 
reduce his advertising in our mediums. 
And I was right. He gave up his option, 
discontinued for a time, and when his 
advertising again appeared, the regular 
price was paid. By reason of increased 
circulation and improvement in the maga- 
zine, the back-cover page of "The De- 

2l4 



MY MASTER STROKE IN ADVERTISING 

lineator" brought $2^00 within two years 
thereafter. 

In the campaign to Kft ' ' The De- 
Kneator's" circulation from the five hun- 
dred thousand we had to the milKon we 
obtained, we ourselves became extensive 
advertisers. Daily newspapers and other 
magazines were our chief mediums, of 
course, but for a time we also used the 
billboards to familiarize the public with a 
catch phrase I had devised. I tried more 
than a year to hit upon something suitable, 
but nothing came to me till one day I read 
an article on the psychology of advertising, 
by Professor Walter Dill Scott, who after- 
wards embodied his investigations in his 
two books, "The Theory of Advertising" 
and "The Psychology of Advertising," in 
which he made it plain that the direct 
injunction " Cut this coupon out and mail 
it to-day" would draw more replies than 
the less emphatic "Use this coupon." 
2t5 



MY MASTER STROKE IN ADVERTISING 

Acting on this hint, I had reproduced the 
line in my handwriting, ' ' Just Get ' The 
DeKneator,' " and waited to see if the 
women of the country would obey. They 
did. To my personal knowledge the 
phrase even tantalized men into buying 
copies to satisfy their curiosity. One 
hundred thousand dollars were spent to 
popularize this phrase. 

Early in the first year of my service, 
Mr. Wilder began carrying out his plans 
for the enlargement of the business. One 
day he said bluntly : ' ' Have you ten thou- 
sand dollars?" "No," I replied, my 
thoughts skipping to the Boston savings 
bank where I had tucked away three thou- 
sand of Mr. Munsey's money. " Not all 
of it, but I can get the balance." 

The conversation ended as abruptly as 

it had begun, but it had its sequel later in 

the announcement that I could buy a 

hundred shares of stock in the Butterick 

2x6 



MY MASTER STROKE IN ADVERTISING 

Publishing Company, Ltd., for $ioo a 
share if I could raise the money within a 
week. I had had one niodest experience in 
finance in Philadelphia, where I borrowed 
money to buy a small block of ' ' Ladies' 
Home Journal" stock, which I closed out 
on leaving the city; but this was a larger 
affair altogether. I had friends — and 
friends, but as I canvassed the $7000 
variety I racked my brain making a list of 
those who, having the sum, might loan it. 
Eventually, by the process of elimination, 
I got down to five names. I went to the 
wealthiest man first. He lived in Boston, 
but had a summer home on the coast, and 
my acquaintance with him was such that 
I went to the latter, and, as he was away, 
waited for his return. He arrived late, 
but promptly invited me to dinner. As 
we took our coffee afterwards on the broad 
veranda overlooking the ocean, I made 
known the purpose of my visit. He 
217 



MY MASTER STROKE IN ADVERTISING 

listened carefully, and telling me that I 
was probably paying twice over what the 
stock was worth, advised me against the 
investment. As he had related his own 
early struggles for success, first as a clerk 
in a drug house, and later as a manufacturer, 
I was much impressed. I knew that he 
was even more than a millionaire, and 
that $7000 was a small amount for him 
to loan me if he believed in the proposition 
as much as I knew he believed in me. 

So reasoning I went back to New York. 
Conservative Boston had taken two days 
of the precious seven. However, there 
were five left, one of which was Sunday. 
Two Philadelphia friends were next on the 
list, and working late, I took the midnight 
train to the Quaker City. Philadelphia 
may be quieter than Boston, but it is less 
conservative. The first man I called upon 
heard me out with interest, told me that 
no man ever made money until he got 
218 



MY MASTER STROKE IN ADVERTISING 

into honest debt, and promptly said, that 
as I could probably get a loan from a bank 
of sixty per cent on the stock, he Avould 
endorse my notes. I was elated, thanked 
him heartily, and departed. I thought it 
wise, however, to call on my other listed 
friend, and after telling him my story, 
mentioned the offer which I had just re- 
ceived, and asked his advice. He volun- 
teered to loan me the remaining thousand 
dollars upon my note, but thought perhaps 
he could let me have the entire amount in 
cash, I to send him the stock as security. 
He would advise me the next day. I thus 
obtained the stock in the parent company, 
and by the absorption of other companies 
at different times later, my ten thousand 
dollars doubled and tripled in value. But 
that is another story, and of its kind most 
interesting. When a captain of finance 
like George Warren Wilder transforms a 
company with a million dollars into three, 
319 



MY MASTER STROKE IN ADVERTISING 

six, and then twelve million dollars of 
capital, he achieves what the great financier 
Morgan did in a larger way with United 
States Steel. And the end is not yet. 
The profit which came to me by the pur- 
chase of this stock was put to a good use, 
as I shall soon relate. Had I followed my 
Boston friend's advice, this story would 
never have been written. This was my 
last borrowing experience, for I went to 
banks thereafter — the only really legitimate 
place for loans. 

Three years and a half went by. The 
concern which, as someone has pictur- 
esquely put it, began with a capital of 
"a ream of paper, a pair of scissors, and 
a good idea" continued its steady march 
towards the great financial success I have 
outlined. The share my own depart- 
ment played is most succinctly told in 
figures . The $187, 000 received in adver- 
tising by the Butterick Company the year 
220 



MY MASTER STROKE IN ADVERTISING 

previous to my coming had grown, in the 
final year of my service, to over $600,000. 
It exceeds a million to-day. 

One day, in the president's office, I saw 
the architect's drawing of a massive stone 
edifice, fourteen stories high, to be built 
for and devoted solely to the business of 
the Butterick Company. Facetiously, the 
treasurer remarked: "Look at your new 
building!" As I looked I thought: 
"Many a true word is spoken in jest. " 
As treasurer, he well knew that my de- 
partment made it possible. 

But the new building never housed me. 
Mr. Thomas Balmer, my successor, occu- 
pied the sumptuous offices of the adver- 
tising director, for before the structure 
was roofed, I perceived a long-awaited 
opening to become a publisher myself. 
I had resigned many times before, but on 
this occasion I took my employer with 
me. As I said at the outset, Mr. Wilder 
221 



MY MASTER STROKE IN ADVERTISING 

has a sense of humor. To all of our 
advertisers and advertising agents he sent 
a printed postal card on which my own 
name was blazoned in type which broke 
all rules of display. It read : ' ' Wanted — 
A successor to John Adams Thayer." 



222 



CHAPTER TWELVE 
Publishing ' ' Everybody's 



1 



CHAPTER TWELVE 
Publishing ' ' Everybody's 




jURING these many years of 
hard work to upbuild other 
people's publications I natur- 
ally had at the back of my 
head the idea of one day be- 
coming a publisher on my own account, 
but my special knowledge of the field had 
taught me that it usually meant a long 
fight to put a publication on its feet. 

The story of McGlure's struggle had 
come to me from his own lips. I was a 
Philadelphian when he started his maga- 
zine, but we met from time to time, and 
he one day outlined his life. Boyhood, 
his college days at Knox, where his later 
partners, Brady and Phillips, were his 

225 



PUBLISHING " EVERYBODY S 

classmates; his varied experiences with 
Albert A. Pope, of bicycle fame, with the 
Century Company, with his own syndicate, 
and finally, with "McClure's Magazine" 
— all were passed in review, and I remem- 
ber his adding that he had reached the 
enviable position at last where he did not 
care whether he made fifteen or a hundred 
thousand dollars a year. Change and rest 
were what he wanted now. 

And there was Munsey. I could not 
forget his eleven heart-breaking years, his 
severe toil by day, his still more exhausting 
drudgery by candlelight when, as he him- 
self has said, he made "a complete switch 
from red-hot actualities to the world of 
fancy," and by sheer force of will produced 
serial stories for his magazines at the rate 
of six thousand words a week. 

Both these men gambled with their 
health and nervous energy ; and as I 
realized the risks they had run, because 
226 



PUBLISHING " EVERYBODY S 

of their ignorance of the game, I resolved 
to bide my time until I was assured of 
two things : capital, or financial backing, 
large enough to lift the venture over the 
rough and stubbly spots always found in 
the critical first year, and an associate as 
familiar with the manufacturing branch as 
I was with the advertising and business 
end. But, the novice may ask, what about 
the editor? The prosaic answer is, that 
with a few notable exceptions, editors do 
not make magazines financially successful. 
It is far more difficult to secure a capable 
advertising manager, and he will demand, 
and probably receive, twice the editor's 
salary. 

Cognizant of these facts, I felt that I had 
reached another significant milestone when 
Mr. Erman J. Ridgway advanced the idea 
of purchasing "Everybody's Magazine." 
During my brief term as Mr. Munsey's 
business manager, Mr. Ridgway and I 

22y 



PUBLISHING " EVERYBODY S 

served a common employer, but as he 
was located in New London at the printing 
plant, we did not come into personal con- 
tact. After my return to New York, how- 
ever, we occasionally met, and I received 
various letters from him, which I showed 
to Mr. Wilder in the hope that we could 
find a place for him as superintendent of 
the mechanical department. We were 
both convinced that in certain lines he 
had ability of a very high order, but the 
emergency not arising, nothing ever came 
of these talks, and, till we joined forces, 
our actual acquaintance was slight. In 
some of our casual meetings, however, he 
had mentioned his ambition to publish a 
magazine and his many futile attempts to 
interest moneyed men in such an enter- 
prise, and it fell out, therefore, that when 
he brought his latest project to me, I saw 
in him the ally for whom I had been 
waiting. 

aaS 



PUBLISHING "everybody's" 

I was eager for the experiment. After 
nearly twelve years as an advertising man 
I found my work monotonous. Aside 
from a steadily increasing salary, which 
had then reached probably the top-notch 
of the time, I had lost sense of progression 
and craved a new outlet for my energy. 
I found it promptly now. Monotony and 
stagnation were unknown in the days which 
followed. There was first the question of 
finance. To invest all my savings in a 
publishing venture was not my intention 
at the start. Ridgway, who was younger 
than I, had no money, so in talking over 
plans for the purchase we decided that we 
would take a third partner and let him 
finance our work, we to draw small salaries 
until we put the magazine on a paying 
basis. The thought of coming down from 
$1000 a month to $5ooo per year had no 
disturbing influence upon me. When the 
matter was broached to Mr. Wilder, whom 
329 



PUBLISHING "EVERYBODY S 

I selected to be the "angel," a phase of 
business acumen appeared which I had 
not anticipated. It was simply this: I 
had the money covering one-third of the 
purchase price of the magazine — therefore 
I should back the venture ; Ridgway, hav- 
ing no capital, could not do likewise, but 
an insurance policy would be taken out, 
covering his life, the premiums to be taken 
care of by the company until we had paid 
the purchase price of the magazine out of 
our profits and were out of debt. My 
optimism was such that I needed no time 
to consider this serious aspect of the trans- 
action. I assented at once. 

Definite negotiations were then begun 
by Mr. Wilder, whose experience in dealing 
with big men and big figures made it easy 
for him to put the matter in such a light 
that an offer of one-fourth less than the 
asking price of $100,000 was accepted. 
Fifteen monthly notes for $5ooo each were 
23o 



PUBLISHING "EVERYBODY S 

duly signed, endorsed, and delivered to 
Mr. Robert G. Ogden, then the New^ York 
partner of John Wanamaker, and the 
magazine was ours. To be sure, the notes 
had yet to be met, but as the payment of 
the first lay six months in the rosy future, 
we glowed with the self-satisfaction of the 
improvident man who, settling his debts 
in similar fashion, said, " I 'm glad that 's 
paid and off my mind." Mr. Ogden's 
final words showed that he shared our 
confidence, and read to-day, have a ring 
of prophecy. ' ' Boys, " he said in parting, 
"I know you will make a big success. 
That is the principal reason why I enter- 
tained your offer in preference to others 
even larger. I want to see the magazine 
win out handsomely, and as I am retiring 
from active business, I shall watch its 
growth with great interest. I believe it 
is now on such a basis that I can com- 
pare it to a peach tree, well-planted and 

23l 



PUBLISHING "EVERYBODY S 

nurtured, with ripe fruit that needs only 
plucking." 

We had our own notions about culti- 
vating our peach tree, however, and in 
our talks with our readers, which we 
made a special feature, we stated just 
what kind of a magazine we proposed 
to give them. As we followed word 
with deed the news promptly got abroad 
that "Everybody's" was different from 
the common run. A paragraph, which 
appeared in a well-known weekly, bears 
witness to the impression we made, and 
in its way voices our ideal. It ran : 

' ' ' Everybody's Magazine ' begins to be 
something more than an entertaining ten 
cents worth of fiction and articles. An 
identity has been developed — a sturdy 
and aggressive identity all its own and 
full of interest and promise. Thus far 
the magazine has prided itself on the 
timeliness of its features and the healthy 

232 



PUBLISHING "EVERYBODY S 

virility of its fiction. Now^ it has found 
itself entered on its ow^n mission, headed 
out on its particular crusade. The key- 
note of this individuality is the article 
by Alfred Henry Lewis, ' The Madness of 
Much Money.' It is safe to say that it 
will be generally read and appreciated 
all over the country. Throughout this 
number the magazine shows a purpose 
to depart from the baleful worship of 
Mammon and its possessors, which char- 
acterizes so much of the writings in cur- 
rent periodicals. " 

When I entered their field, many pub- 
lishers offered me frank sympathy, but as 
I am no pessimist I gave more weight to 
the cheerier welcome of Mr. William W. 
Ellsworth. *'I congratulate you," he 
said. "You will get a lot of fun out 
of it." As the secretary of the Century 
Company, I felt that he, if anybody, 
ought to know, but I understood better 
233 



PUBLISHING "EVERYBODY S 

the special brand of amusement he had 
in mind after he had told me a storj of 
Theodore Roosevelt. Meeting the latter 
in Union Square one piping midsummer 
afternoon during his stirring term as Police 
Commissioner, Mr. Ellsworth expressed 
his surprise that he w^as not then enjoying 
himself at Oyster Bay, to which Mr. 
Roosevelt characteristically replied : ' ' Do 
you think I could get more real fun any- 
where than I am having right now in New 
York? " So it was with us. We worked 
hard, but the work was as absorbing as 
a game. 

The objectionable advertisement loomed 
in the forefront of our problems, this time 
a more insidious enemy, because, like the 
Greeks, it came bearing gifts. In com- 
mon with other general magazines, 
"Everybody's" at the time of our pur- 
chase was running patent medicine and 
other advertisements at variance with the 
234 



PUBLISHING "EVERYBODY S 

high standard I had set for myself. The 
test came over an order for a number 
of pages of a headache powder, which 
reached us a few days after we assumed 
control. Just at this juncture the adver- 
tising agent, who some years before had 
edited my "smooth" letter to Gyrus 
Curtis, dropped in to see me, and hand- 
ing him the order, I asked his opinion. 
I expected him to confirm my own con- 
viction that, a publisher now myself, I 
could do no less than practice the doctrine 
I had so energetically preached. To my 
surprise he disagreed. 

' ' Other magazines are beginning to de- 
cline these things," he said. "Take the 
money they turn away. Wait till you 
have many pages of advertising. Then 
you can afford to be more particular." 

I thanked him for his advice, but the 
headache "cure" went back. The next 
day I joyously announced to my associate 
235 



PUBLISHING "EVERYBODY S 

that business was looking up ; I had even 
declined several pages. Asked for par- 
ticulars, I told of the temptation I had 
put away. He stared his surprise. 

* ' But is n*t that good business ?" he de- 
manded. "'Munsey' and other maga- 
zines take it." 

' ' ' Munsey ' and the others can afford 
to take it," I answered. "If we can't 
make a success of 'Everybody's Magazine' 
without running the stuff I have declined 
for so many years, then we'll make a 
failure of it, and I shall lose my money 
and you — your time." 

From that moment we were in hearty 
accord in this policy. The next day I sent 
broadcast an elaborate announcement of 
our policy . In this circular I told of our 
appeal to the agent, of our belief in his 
friendship, of our regard for his opinion. 
We felt, however, that in this instance he 
was wrong — hence the announcement. 
236 



PUBLISHING " EVERYBODY S 

We had use for the money, but in this 
reform we were leaders, not followers. 

We now began advertising in the daily 
papers, but of our many advertisements, 
the first, though small, is best remem- 
bered. As our initial number was for 
June, we increased the output only ten 
thousand copies, for magazine sales are 
less as summer comes. A week after 
publication, the entire edition being sold, 
my professional eye saw an opportunity 
to advertise, and on the train to my office 
I formulated an advertisement headed 
"Our First Mistake." Reading the an- 
nouncement to my co-worker, I asked his 
opinion. The day was a sultry one, and 
we were both fagged with the work on 
our first issue. Without hesitation he 
said, "Oh, I don't know. I guess not." 

"All right," said I, and the advertise- 
ment in a dozen pieces went into the 
basket. 

237 



PUBLISHING " EVERYBODY S 

I had much to do and knew we would 
get along without its aid. No one little 
thing could stop our success. But on 
returning from lunch, Mr. Ridgway said 
he had been thinking it over, and that he 
did not know but it would be a good plan 
to advertise as I suggested, and thereupon 
mentioned a point of which I had not 
thought. So we sat opposite each other 
at our big flat desk, and I waited for him 
to write the advertisement. This done, 
he tossed it over. 

' ' What do you say ? " 

I read it. 

"Oh, I don't know. I guess not," I 
replied, and back I tossed it. 

He thereupon tore the paper up and 
threw it into the basket. 

The humor of our action struck us in 

an instant, and we looked into each other s 

eyes and laughed. I then suggested that 

he get his draft, I mine, and that jointly 

238 



PUBLISHING " EVERYBODY S 

we prepare one which would suit. So we 
stuck together the torn fragments. The 
advertisement was sent to the leading 
newspapers of the country and was a 
great success. Our assistant editor, a 
most intelligent woman, told me that she 
read it without realizing it was our own 
till the very end. 

With the editorial work of the magazine 
I did not concern myself. Mr. Ridgway 
directed this department with the aid of 
able editors, both men and women. I 
did, however, reserve the right to pass 
finally upon the contents before it went to 
press. Occasionally a picture or an article 
was cut out on my suggestion and others 
substituted. I had a hand, too, in "With 
Everybody's Publishers," which at the 
beginning was a strong feature of the 
magazine. The department "Under a 
Spreading Chestnut Tree " was also one 
in which I became interested. In fact, I 
239 



PUBLISHING ' ' EVERYBODY S 

recall that I paid twentj-five dollars to the 
man who suggested this heading and some 
stories which came with it. The stories 
were returned. The heading should have 
gone back also, for I found out later that 
this also was a "chestnut, " having been 
used in a New York paper for many 
months. 

I was always eager to get the type- 
written copy of ' ' Frenzied Finance " before 
it went through the editorial department. 
Thereby hangs a tale. In one of Mr. 
Lawson's chapters he referred to a " meet- 
ing of the Board of Directors of the United 
States Steel Corporation, wherein Mr. 
Henry H. Rogers, having made his invari- 
able plea for quick action, was interrupted 
by the president of the corporation, who 
blurted out : ' Mr. Rogers will vote on this 
question after we have talked on it.' In a 
voice that those who heard it say sounded 
like a rattlesnake's hiss in a refriger- 
2/io 



PUBLISHING "EVERYBODY S 

ator, Mr. Rogers replied: 'All meetings 
where I sit as a director vote first and 
talk after I am gone/" Rereading this, 
after it had been put in type, I found that 
our editors had changed the species of the 
snake. Demanding a reason, I was in- 
formed that neither did snakes inhabit 
refrigerators nor rattlesnakes hiss, but 
that on conferring together in the absence 
of the editor-in-chief, they had decided to 
let the refrigerator remain, but to make 
it a black snake, which really did hiss. I 
instructed these sticklers for exact biology 
to restore the sentence to its original 
pungent form. A few days afterwards 
Mr. Ridgway, who was in the West, also 
noticed the alteration and telegraphed me : 
' ' Please have editorial department change 
black snake to rattlesnake as originally 
sent." 

The man who turns the pages of his 
magazine in slippered ease seldom realizes 
24i 



PUBLISHING "EVERYBODY S 

the labor involved in its preparation. He 
appreciates that authors have written, 
artists plied brush and pencil, and editors 
racked their brains to provide these novel- 
ties which instruct or beguile his evening 
hour, but of the enormous mass of detail 
— the important little things — which lies 
beyond, he knows nothing. Who, for ex- 
ample, imagines that the weather enters 
into the magazine publisher's calculations ? 
Yet it is one of the factors which must be 
considered when the monthly question, 
' ' How many copies shall we print ? " pre- 
sents itself. An April number issued 
during the last days of March will sag 
dismally if the usual bad days are passed 
before it reaches the news-stands. In 
fact, I should say that a too lamb-like exit 
of March would make a difference of 
twenty thousand in the sales of an edition 
of half a million copies. The caprices of 
climate aside, it is never an easy matter to 

2^2 



PUBLISHING "EVERYBODY S 

gage the size of an edition save in the case 
of a gradual increase or a gradual decline 
of circulation. 

Or take the cover design. Who con- 
siders vv^ith what effort it may have been 
evolved ? In our early days we had 
much assistance from Ralph Tilton, son 
of Theodore Tilton, in handling this 
troublesome detail. It was he who pro- 
posed that we have autochromatic plates 
made from actual designs, photographed 
down to the proper size. While our first 
cover was not particularly artistic — it 
represented two hearts cut on a birch tree 
— it was yet different from all other maga- 
zine covers, and caused comment by reason 
of its sentiment and novelty. He formu- 
lated many other ideas for us, suggesting 
them often in less time than it takes me 
to tell of it. After "Frenzied Finance" 
began, the endless problems which came 
up in regard to business, advertising, and 
243 



PUBLISHING "EVERYBODY S 

editorial, crowded us so closely that we 
all, including the art director — who was 
very capable in his line — had difficulty in 
finding new designs, but in such emergen- 
cies Ralph Tilton never failed us. Once, 
when we were in desperate straits, I tele- 
phoned him to meet me at the Cafe Martin 
for luncheon . An idea was at once forth- 
coming. "You say your Lawson article 
treats of stock market operations. To me 
that suggests bulls and lambs. Why not 
go to a toy store and get a bull's head and 
a little lamb on wheels? Arrange them 
artistically, with a suitable background, and 
you will have a good cover." Whereupon 
he penciled on the tablecloth a rough 
sketch for a design, which was not only 
appropriate but highly striking. Sugges- 
tions of this kind stimulated our imagina- 
tions, and I believe that one of our most 
ejffective covers was that of a tiger, photo- 
graphed direct in its natural colors from a 
244 



PUBLISHING "everybody's" 

beautiful $2000 rug that I happened to see 
in the shop window of a Broadway furrier. 
I had read the manuscript of the Lawson 
article the previous day, and as it contained 
the expression, ' ' This cruel, tigerish, 
system," the beast's eyes, glaring at me 
through the glass, brought me to a halt, 
and in an instant gave me the idea. 

On its business side, as well as in 
quality, '* Everybody's Magazine" was 
created afresh during the first twelve 
months of our ownership. Abolishing 
the cut-price club plan, we put the sub- 
scription list on a stronger basis, and in a 
year doubled our circulation. As a nat- 
ural result, we also doubled our advertis- 
ing rate. When we bought the property, 
its price was $i5o a page, one dollar per 
page per thousand circulation being the 
recognized rate among general magazines, 
though an extra twenty, or even fifty, 
thousand is often given for good measure. 
245 



PUBLISHING "EVERYBODY S 

With a showing of three hundred thou- 
sand we could ask $3oo a page, and on 
this healthy footing we already stood when 
the publication of ' ' Frenzied Finance" be- 
gan to increase our circulation to the merry 
tune of fifty thousand copies a month. 



246 



CHAPTER THIRTEEN 
The Discovert of Tom Lawson 




CHAPTER THIRTEEN 
The Discovert of Tom Lawson 

[T was as a private in a com- 
pany of Hayes and Wheeler 
Cadets that I had my first 
glimpse of Thomas W. Law- 
son. That curious phase 
of our political life, the torchlight cluh, 
reached its climax of extravagance in the 
legion of plumed knights who eight years 
later went down to defeat with James G. 
Blaine, but it was a sprightly and pictur- 
esque factor in the Tilden-Hayes campaign, 
and as such served as a vent for the abun- 
dant energy of the youthful Lawson. I 
did not know him personally then, for he 
was a captain, and even in campaign clubs, 
captains and privates are far removed. 
249 



THE DISCOVERY OF TOM LAWSON 

But I heard so much of him as we made 
our noisy crusades about the suburbs of 
Boston that his share in this boyish epi- 
sode persisted in my memory till our 
actual acquaintance began. 

In the twenty odd years which inter- 
vened, the captain of the torchlight com- 
pany became a captain of finance. If a 
single word can summarize an epoch, the 
word for that quarter century is money. 
Colossal fortunes never rolled themselves 
up more quickly; men of commanding 
intellect never devoted themselves with 
more relentless energy to a sordid ideal. 
The ally of the foremost financiers, Thomas 
W. Lawson's knowledge of the inner his- 
tory of this period was second to none, 
and when one day, disgusted with the 
methods of his associates, he told the press 
of America that he meant to spend the rest 
of his life — and his fortune if necessary 
- — in showing up Standard Oil, our silent 
a5o 



THE DISCOVERY OF TOM LAWSON 

partner, Mr. Wilder, was struck with an 
idea. Dining with me that evening, he 
suggested that if we could get Tom Law- 
son to write the story of Amalgamated 
Copper for our magazine, we should have 
something worth telling, something people 
would be eager to read, something which 
would boom our circulation. The idea 
made an instant appeal to me, and the 
next morning I mentioned it to Ridgwaj, 
saying I approved of it, and that, if he 
agreed, I would attempt to secure the 
story. He replied that Wilder had tele- 
phoned him about it the day before, and 
that while he doubted if we could get it, 
he saw no harm in trying. That night, 
notwithstanding I had received no answer 
to a telegram inquiring whether Mr. Lawson 
was there, I went to Boston, taking with 
me the editor, John O'Hara Cosgrave. 

As a preliminary move we first called 
on my friend. General Charles H. Taylor, 

25l 



THE DISCOVERY OF TOM LAWSON 

of "The Boston Globe." It is not a 
matter of common knowledge that General 
Taylor was one of the pioneer ten-cent 
magazine publishers. Launching his ven- 
ture under the name of "American 
Homes," he was on the threshold of a 
tremendous success when the great Boston 
fire of 1872-73 destroyed his editions and 
plant. But for this he would doubtless 
have set the pace for other magazines 
instead of concentrating his energy upon 
publishing the powerful daily so ably man- 
aged by his talented sons. Retaining a 
keen interest in the field where he him- 
self had turned so promising a furrow, he 
readily gave me a letter of introduction, 
and as I have often known trifles to score 
where larger artillery fails, I thought it 
expedient to ask him to mention that, a 
Boston boy myself, I had once marched 
among Mr. Lawson's torchlight hosts. 
This General Taylor did, and, as Mr. 
262 



THE DISCOVERY OF TOM LAWSON 

Lawson himself afterwards told me, the 
allusion reached its mark. 

Our first attempt to see him, however, 
was unsuccessful, but his secretary told us 
that we had interested Mr. Lawson, who 
wished to know exactly the kind of articles 
we wanted and what we proposed to do 
about advertising them. Then, finally, at 
the close of the day, there was brought to 
our hotel a typewritten paragraph, un- 
signed, which stated that he knew just 
what we desired, but not being certain he 
wanted then to begin to write it, would 
give the matter consideration. With this 
showing, which might mean all or nothing, 
the editor and I returned to New York. 

Now foremost among the personal char- 
acteristics of Mr. Cosgrave is the quality 
of persistence. He had assisted Double- 
day-Page in editing "Everybody's" under 
the John Wanamaker regime, and coming 
over to us at the time we bought the prop- 
253 



THE DISCOVERY OF TOM LAWSON 

erty, was the acting editor of the magazine 
under Mr. Ridgway. He had already 
shown signs of the great abihty which, on 
the estabhshment of ' ' Ridg way's Weekly, " 
later won him the full editorship of 
"Everybody's, " at a salary equaled by 
few editors. At the time of which I write 
this dominant quality was even stronger, 
untempered by experience, than it is now, 
and in the hope that he might put our 
business in so plausible a light that Mr. 
Lawson would consent, we sent him back 
to Boston. It was without doubt his reso- 
lute siege of the financier's outer office 
which finally won, for after many days 
Mr. Lawson became so impressed with his 
persistence that he granted him an inter- 
view. This talk had its prompt sequel in 
a general conference which settled the 
matter on a basis beyond our rosiest 
dreams. In his characteristic manner Mr. 
Lawson outlined what he hoped to accom- 
254 



THE DISCOVERY OF TOM LAWSON 

plish, disclosed his remedy for the evils he 
proposed to attack, and then stating that 
having looked us up since our first request 
for an interview and decided that we were 
game, told us that he intended to write 
the articles for serial publication without 
payment, and to advertise them in the daily 
newspapers at his own expense. We had 
secured a prize unique in the annals of 
m^agazine publishing. 

But where, it was often asked, did 
Lawson come in? There was no ready 
answer to the question, for we never pre- 
cisely knew. "The Remedy," which he 
explained to us at our second interview, 
was only to be given to the public after 
' ' Frenzied Finance" was finished. It was 
his belief that when this was unfolded and 
the American people, with the great down- 
fall of the trusts, had come into possession 
of the millions ruthlessly pillaged from 
them, he also, in common with the people, 
255 



THE DISCOVERY OF TOM LAWSON 

would reap the material benefit of his 
work. 

The profit to "Everybody's" was hap- 
pily less remote. Mr. Lawson's first 
article sketched, in his inimitable way, 
what he meant to tell. The hors-d' (Buvres 
of the feast to follow, it whetted the appe- 
tite of the American public as never did 
cocktail and caviar tempt the palate of the 
veriest gourmet. Nor did Jonah open 
wider eyes upon his record-breaking gourd 
than we turned on the miracle wrought in 
our circulation. We beheld the wonderful 
vision of owning a great magazine property 
without the long, hard preparatory struggle 
of a " Munsey " or a " McClure ' ' ; we saw 
ourselves, free of worry as to personal 
needs, possessed of power to continue our 
work for what we believed to be the 
common good. 

Mr. Lawson's laurels were not to pass 
unchallenged, however. The July issue, 
256 



THE DISCOVERY OF TOM LAWSON 

wherein "Frenzied Finance" began its 
spectacular career, also contained the first 
installment of a serial which we had ar- 
ranged to publish long before the Lawson 
project arose. In the early autumn Mr. 
Hall Caine performed his annual pilgrimage 
to London to call upon his publisher. The 
latter, having transatlantic connections, 
mentioned to the author that the circulation 
of "Everybody's Magazine" had made 
extraordinary gains. "Yes," said Mr. 
Caine, "I expected it. That is the 
American magazine which is publishing 
my new story, *The Prodigal Son.' " 

It was my lot to have many interviews 
with our remarkable contributor, some of 
them intensely interesting. Indeed, I may 
say that although I have waited hours, 
even days, to see him — so many were the 
demands upon his time — I have always 
felt repaid for the delay. A fluent talker, 
his conversation was as entertaining as 
267 



THE DISCOVERY OF TOM LA1T80N 

his literary style, which I need remind 
no one has a racy vigor all its own. 
These visits of mine had mainly to do 
with the exploiting of ' ' Frenzied Finance." 
At the time he promised us the story we 
had discussed many suggestions for its 
advertisement. One was that we offer 
$5o,ooo as a prize for the best essay on 
"Frenzied Finance" at the end of its 
serial run. As Mr. Lawson put this for- 
ward as the condition on which he would 
give us his story, we readily assented, 
though we believed and eventually per- 
suaded him, that there were more effective 
ways of advertising. The regular monthly 
announcements each involved a race against 
time . Magazine publishers usually send out 
the advertisements of their forthcoming 
issue in advance, the agent mailing them 
direct to the newspapers with instructions 
to insert on the day of publication. It 
was never possible for us to follow this 
a58 



THB DISCOVERY OF TOM LAWSON 

custom. Written by Mr. Lawson the after- 
noon before the magazine was to appear, 
the advertisements of ' ' Frenzied Finance " 
were put in type by some Boston news- 
paper and then rushed to the other daihes 
throughout the country by telegraph. 
Once in a while the announcement would 
be ready in time for someone to carry it 
to New York, whence it could be tele- 
phoned to nearer points, like Philadelphia, 
Baltimore, and Washington. But these 
occasions for economy were rare. 

Joining him late one afternoon for a 
twelfth hour consultation of this sort, I 
found his desk heaped high with a mass 
of letters, telegrams, and checks, all in 
answer to one of his large financial adver- 
tisements of the day before. He was 
forming a $5, 000,000 pool for the pur- 
pose of selling short American Smelt- 
ing and certain other stocks which he 
claimed were grossly inflated. By the 
269 



THE DISCOVERY OF TOM LAWSON 

action of this pool these stocks were to be 
put down to a point near their real value. 
Only wealthy men were invited to partici- 
pate, and the smallest check acceptable 
from any one person was $25,ooo. Tak- 
ing up one of these letters, with its lemon- 
colored enclosure, he turned it over to me 
with the remark, "That's a good-sized 
check , Thayer . ' ' The amount was $5o , coo ; 
the letter, which began "Dear Tom,'* said 
briefly that the writer believed in the pool 
and would later in the week, perhaps, 
double his subscription. Both letter and 
check were signed * ' Russell Sage. " Since 
the venerable financier had been handled 
without gloves in his articles, I was sur- 
prised, but as the check also bore the usual 
scrawl of a bank cashier, it did not occur 
to me to doubt its authenticity. A few 
days later, however, happening to call on 
the vice-president of the Corn Exchange 
Bank, upon which the check was drawn. 
260 



THE DISCOVERY OF TOM LAWSON 

I asked to see their method of certification, 
and then perceived that the $5, 000,000 
pool w^as short a distinguished member. 
When I next savsr Mr. Lawson I told him 
that he had deliberately deceived me. The 
wonder in his blue eyes turned to merri- 
ment as I explained. "That vs^as fair," 
he said. "It was sent me as a joke — I 
passed it on." 

During one of mj trips to New England 
I chanced to be a witness of his sensational 
meeting with the mining operator, Colonel 
Greene. The latter, using page advertise- 
ments in the daily press, had called the 
author of "Frenzied Finance" a liar, a 
fakir, and a charlatan, and stated that he 
proposed to take an early train to Boston 
to settle with him. On the appearance of 
this advertisement, we received a telegram 
from a city in the far West, addressed to 
Mr. Lawson. It ran : "Bully boy. You 
are doing a great work. Others besides 
261 



THE DISCOVERY OF TOM LAWSOM 

Colonel Greene have notches in their guns. 
I am taking first train to Boston." I also 
took the first train to Boston, in the hope 
that I might arrive in advance of these tv\^o 
redoubtable warriors. In the morning 
papers that day appeared a telegram, sup- 
posedly from Mr. Law^son to Colonel 
Greene, to the effect that as he had much 
consideration for his office, which con- 
tained many art treasures, he would meet 
him in front of the Old State House, where 
the blood of patriots had previously been 
shed. Crowds thronged the historic spot, 
but Colonel Greene failed to appear. On 
my way to Mr. Lawson's home that even- 
ing, he regaled me with a number of 
interesting episodes of his earlier life, 
wherein attempts to assassinate him had 
proved futile. Securing lodging for the 
night at the Touraine, the clerk telephoned 
me early the next morning that Mr. Lawson 
had called and sent in his card to Colonel 
262 



THB DISCOVERY OF TOM LAWSON 

Greene, who by now had reached the 
battleground . Hastily donning my clothes , 
and without breakfast, I descended just in 
time to witness their meeting in the hotel 
corridor, and to mount with them to 
Colonel Greene's apartments. No weapons 
were used in this encounter. It was a 
battle of words, in which the author of 
''Frenzied Finance" was an easy victor. 

At this period Mr. Lawson figured in an 
episode closely personal to myself. I have 
referred in an earlier chapter to the touch- 
ing tribute paid me by my friends when I 
left Philadelphia. It remained a warm 
memory in the years which followed, and I 
cherished the hope that I might some day 
show my appreciation. In January, igoB, 
this thought of a decade crystallized in a defi- 
nite plan. I decided that I would myself 
give a dinner and ask, not only those old- 
time friends, but such new ones as had in 
the meantime come upon my horizon. 
263 



THE DISCOVERY OF TOM LAWSON 

Public dinners are often stupid affairs, 
and unless a Patrick Francis Murphy or 
a Simeon Ford is to speak, they are 
avoided by the man fond of home and 
family. Private dinners, without some 
amusing feature, may be quite as unin- 
teresting, and I therefore planned that my 
guests should be entertained in some novel 
way. Given under such circumstances, 
no representatives of the press were per- 
mitted to be present. Nevertheless, the 
newspapers of New York and other cities 
printed various accounts. The one which 
follows has its humorous points : 

LAWSON OF BOSTON BRINGS 
PROSPERITY TO MAGAZINE 

Publisher of ' ' Frenzied Finance " Series Gives 

Dinner at St. Regis, on Gold Plates — 

Lawson Talks over Phone 

"New York, February 20 — (Special) 
John Adams Thayer, who is Secretary 
264 



THE DISCOVERY OF TOM LAWSON 

and Treasurer of the Ridgwaj-Thayer 
Publishing Company, gave a dinner at 
the St. Regis Hotel to-night to celebrate 
his birthday anniversary. Incidentally the 
dinner also celebrated the prosperity of 
'Everybody's Magazine' since it became 
the medium through which Thomas W. 
Lawson of Boston exposes himself and 
others. 

"It was a feast fit to celebrate a six 
months' hunt for the money devil. About 
Thayer sat nearly forty congratulants . 
Some of them share his present prosperity, 
but most of them are men with whom he 
had been associated in the past. They had 
been invited with cards which were en- 
graved in facsimile of Thayer's own hand- 
writing. As a cheerful jest they had also 
been furnished with cards entitling them 
to admission at the front entrance of the 
St. Regis. 

' ' The dinner was served on a modest 
265 



THB DISCOVERY OP TOM LAWSON 

collection of plate which the hotel classifies 
as its 'special banquet gold service.' The 
menus were bound in brown leather, and 
included a letter from Lawson to Thayer, 
which carefully was copyrighted by Thayer, 
thus keeping it from any possibility of 
reproduction by vulgar newspapers. 

** Telephones had been provided at the 
place of each guest, and at ten o'clock the 
inevitable Thomas Lawson, who is in 
Boston, was put into connection with all 
of them at once. He talked for twenty 
minutes. Some of his auditors said after- 
ward it would n't do at all for them to tell 
what he said. Others said simply they 
couldn't remember. 

' * Certainly Lawson dealt cheerfully with 
the host of the evening, and complimented 
him on his prosperity in battling with the 
armies of greed and their vulgar display 
of ill-gotten wealth. Likewise, he said 
the past, present, and future finance was 
266 



THE DISCOVERY OF TOM LAWSON 

known only to one man , and that one man 
was at the Boston end of the telephone." 

Mr. Lawson's speech by telephone was 
not at all serious. His letter, on the other 
hand, struck a different note, yet one 
equally characteristic of the man. It was 
entitled "Looping the Life Circle," and 
was read by Mr. Ridgway, who has ora- 
torical abilities of no mean order. Copy- 
righted as it was at the time, it has never 
before been published. 

' ' Looping the life circle is the order 
of human existence. Old Ringmaster 
Time cracks his whip as the man steps 
out upon the flying zone to begin his 
wonderful journey by way of sunland, 
moon, and starland to the enchanted 
chamber at the world's end. Round the 
great orbit he swings through spring days 
and summertime, and above the music of 
the spheres the crack of the Ringmaster's 
267 



THE DISCOVERY OF TOM LAWSON 

whip signals the passing years, faintly 
at first, louder as the mellow autumn 
shadows fall and in thunder tones as the 
circle spins into the hoary regions where 
Winter is king. To-night the echo of the 
whip's crack, dimly heard, is In the air, 
and we who cling near your rim of the 
circle rejoice that its course is still in the 
August loop, and that before you and us 
stretch glorious days of racing in space 
amid suns and constellations hung out for 
our delectation. Afar off, indefinite as a 
dream, is the enchanted chamber, so that 
what need we care, while our grip on the 
rim is strong, for the lightning play or 
the bleak wind that blows in the wild 
waste places, or for the gray gatesman 
at the world's end. To-night's flight is 
through the perfume of stellar gardens ; 
to-morrow we will pick the ripened fruit 
in Orion's orchards, and before Time's 
whip cracks out again, who knows through 
268 



THE DISCOVERY OF TOM LAWSON 

what Aladdin realm we may be flitting. 
So let us be glad — glad of the speed and 
the beauty, of the perfume and the vision, 
but most of all glad that Fate has set us 
so close together on the circle rim that 
while the echo of the Ringmaster's whip 
is still in the air, we can clasp each other's 
hands and know that whatever storms lower, 
we have not to weather them alone." 

I possess two personally inscribed books 
of Mr. Lawson's. One is "The Lawson 
History of the America's Cup," the other 
"Frenzied Finance." In the latter he 
penned this: 

"My dear Thayer, — As sure as water 
seeks its level, released balloons the sky, 
and stocks the earth, crime will hunt 
its creator. 

' ' You little thought when General Taylor 
sent you with that note that you and I 
would be condemned to travel hell together 
269 



THE DISCOVERY OF TOM LAWSON 

without a fire extinguisher or insurance 
poKcj, but we live and learn. 

"To show you I do, and that I pick 
blooms from the bush of forgiveness as 
I travel, I wish you and yours a most 
happy Christmas. Believe me, 

' ' Yours very truly, 

"Thomas W. Lawson. 
" Boston, December 25, igoB." 



370 



CHAPTER FOURTEEN 
Divorced — with Alimony 




CHAPTER FOURTEEN 
Divorced — with Alimony 

'R. LAWSON'S great serial 
began its course in July, and 
as it is customary to give the 
cover design of that month 
a patriotic touch, this issue, 
the best we could produce, bore an eagle 
with outspread wings and the American 
flag printed in strong colors. The red, 
white, and blue attracted much attention 
on the news-stands. It also drew the 
notice of the Chief Police Commissioner 
of Boston, who declared that the American 
flag was used as an advertisement, and 
that therefore the magazine could not be 
sold. The newsdealers in Boston, how- 
ever, always ready for an emergency, 
273 



DIVORCED WITH ALIMONY 

decided that their customers should be 
suppKed, even without the covers, and 
so announced by large signs. Whereupon 
the Commissioner's decision, of course, 
got into the newspapers, vv^hose many 
comments and editorials led to increased 
sales in Boston and vicinity. Perceiving 
a chance to help the sales in other parts 
of the country, I made a hurried trip to 
Boston and had a talk with the Com- 
missioner. He had a charming personality 
and was very polite, but insisted that he 
must obey the letter of the law and pro- 
hibit the sale of the magazine. After my 
talk with him I gave an interview to the 
Boston papers, told of the conference, and 
stated that the publishers of ' ' Everybody's 
Magazine" had no thought of desecrating 
the American flag — in fact, that we did 
not consider the cover an advertisement at 
all. Our idea was to encourage rather 
than to discourage patriotism. Changing 
274 



DIVORCED WITH ALIMONY 

the cover of the second edition, which was 
then on the presses, we reproduced in a 
large broadside many of the editorials and 
items referring to the suppression of the 
first edition, and sent these sheets to 
the editors of newspapers throughout the 
country, requesting them, as believers in 
right and justice, to reprint some of 
them, with or without comment. The 
fact that we were ourselves large adver- 
tisers at the time helped considerably, 
and the immense amount of free advertis- 
ing which we received resulted in the 
sale of the second edition. In many 
places throughout the country copies of 
the July issue were sold at three and four 
times its regular price, and extraordinary 
stories reached us of the manner in which 
the magazine circulated from hand to 
hand. In a letter which came to us 
from an isolated town near Quebec, it 
was stated that one copy of the July issue 
275 



DIVORCED WITH ALIMONY 

had been read by forty-five different 
people. 

Then began the incessant call for back 
numbers. The demand was so great that 
w^e printed a little pamphlet called ' ' The 
Chapters Which Went Before," and this 
assisted greatly in putting the story in the 
hands of the public. Although the August 
issue exceeded its predecessor by fifty thou- 
sand copies, it yet fell twenty-five thousand 
short of the newsdealers' requirements. 
Month by month we taxed the full capacity 
of a number of printing establishments, 
until, in less than a year after Mr. Lawson's 
articles began, we announced an edition 
of one million, which he himself had 
predicted. 

In the meantime we had to effect a revo- 
lution in our advertising. With our cir- 
culation climbing in the amazing fashion 
I have described, we justly felt that our 
price for advertising should increase pro 
276 



DIVORCED WITH ALIMONY 

rata, but as it is customary for publishers 
to giA^e notice of an advance, meanwhile 
taking orders at the old rate for a year, w^e 
found ourselves in a dilemma. The un- 
usual situation seemed to w^arrant unusual 
measures, and we accordingly decided to 
break with tradition and announce an im- 
mediate increase, without notice, to $4oo 
per page. To impress advertisers with the 
fact that the occasion was exceptional in 
every way, we printed this announcement 
in two colors on Japanese parchment paper, 
and giving it the form of a proclamation, 
affixed the signature of the secretary and 
the seal of the company at the bottom. 
Yet even before a later rate of $5oo per 
page was established, our circulation had 
so grown that we felt certain of an ultimate 
monthly issue of a million. We thereupon 
made a price of a dollar a line per thousand 
circulation, with a bonus of one hundred 
thousand thrown in, but this device was 
277 



DIVORCED WITH ALIMONY 

short-lived. Advertisers must know in 
advance what they are to pay ; othervvdse it 
is impossible for them to arrange their 
expenditure. 

These rapidly advancing prices made 
our back-cover page very costly, for this 
position in all magazines is valued at four 
times a regular page. It so happened that 
one of these back covers w-as for once not 
sold in advance. A week remained in 
which to find a customer at its fixed price ; 
I was in a quandary. We had announced 
an edition of a million copies, and this 
space, which at the old rate had brought 
as high as $2000, had now doubled in 
value. Who would buy a page w^orth 
$4ooo ? Then I had an inspiration . ^^ hy 
not advertise it ! Such a thing had never 
been done, but if anjlhing of value could 
be sold by advertising, why not this? 
The idea came to me in the early morning 
— at the hour when dreams come — and 

2.78 



DIVORCED WITH ALIM05Y 

it was so realistic that I awoke, rose, and 
"VNTote the announcement. Then I sought 
repose again and found it. I also found a 
buyer for the pa^e. On the very day of 
its appearance in the morning •"Sun" my 
advertiiement brought a customer. 

The problems of the immediate hour 
were so exactino- that it was impossible to 
attempt many innovations in my special 
p^o^inc€. One favorite project I could not 
carry out aimed to ^roup our advertising 
in departments which should each be pref- 
aced bv a few pa^es of reading matter. 
I did, however, introduce a -'Classified 
Advertising Department," consisting of 
small announcements. This was a new 
feature for a monthlv. notAvithstanding the 
fact that " The Outlook." a verv successful 
weeklv. had inserted pages of small adver- 
tisements for manv vears. This idea 
proved so popular — some sixteen pages 
appearing in the earlv numbers — that 
279 



DIVORCED WITH ALIMONY 

other magazines followed our lead, to the 
profit of themselves and their clients alike. 
Our contemporaries also paid us the com- 
pliment of borrowing the ' * Index to Ad- 
vertisements," which the remarkable bulk 
and range of our announcements caused 
me to inaugurate. 

Those were roaring times in the adver- 
tising world generally, and what with the 
growth of the field and the dearth of 
specialists, I had presently to pay $i5,ooo 
annually, with a contract for three years, 
to the wonderfully efficient man who took 
the burden of "Everybody's" advertising 
department off my shoulders. 

Giving our readers the same number of 
reading pages as "Harper's" and "The 
Century, " we felt that we were entitled to 
more than ten cents a copy. But to raise 
the subscription price of a magazine is an 
important step. I was well aware of this, 
for "The Ladies' Home Journal" had 
280 



DIVORCED WITH ALIMONY 

doubled its price a few years before I went 
to it, and I had specially studied the work- 
ing of this phase of publishing. With our 
mounting circulation and low advertising 
rate, for the higher prices, though an- 
nounced, were not yet in force, profits 
were small. At fifteen cents a copy there 
would be little loss on circulation. When 
to make the change was the problem. 
Then one morning the daily newspapers 
did us the kindness to print the statement 
that "Everybody's Magazine" was to be 
suppressed. The attorney for Henry H. 
Rogers, of Standard Oil fame, had written 
the American News Company that if the 
magazines were distributed and put on sale 
throughout the country, action at law 
would be taken. The elevated train on 
which I rode that morning seemed to 
creep at a snail's pace. Arriving at my 
office, I burst in on Mr. Ridgway. 
" Now 's the time ! " I cried. 
281 



DIVORCED WITH ALIMONY 

With the dignity of a foreign ambassa- 
dor, the active partner of mj troubles 
leaned back in his chair and smiled. 

" Yes ; for vv^hat?" said he. 

'* To increase our price I " 

My co-worker took fire himself. In a 
moment he had our printer on the tele- 
phone, the presses were stopped, and the 
change was made. The free advertising 
given us by the magic name of Standard 
Oil was so immense that the edition for 
the month, though larger than before, 
was swept from the news-stands on the 
day of publication. 

Our horizon was sometimes troubled 
with clouds without this silver lining of 
gratuitous advertisement. We never wor- 
ried about the money for the payroll or 
for the paper or for the printer — those 
nightmares which haunt the bedsides of 
many publishers ; but we did face breath- 
taking situations. These were more or 
282 



DIVORCED WITH ALIMONY 

less closely related to Mr. Lawson's per- 
sonality. One such episode had its storm 
center in a picture of Mr. J. Pierpont 
Morgan, to whom Mr. Lawson referred 
in one of his chapters. Not finding a 
good photograph for reproduction, we 
asked Mr. Lawson if he had one we might 
use, with the upshot that we made a plate 
from a steel engraving which was in itself 
a work of art. After the magazine ap- 
peared on the news-stands we were waited 
upon at our offices by the publisher of 
the engraving — a limited edition — and 
he came prepared. He had with him, in 
fact, the law of copyright, which clearly 
stated that one dollar a copy could be 
claimed for every impression we had 
made. Inasmuch as our output that 
month totalled seven hundred thousand 
copies, we were liable for $700,000. It 
was a most interesting afternoon. 

Another incident, as disconcerting, 
283 



DIVORCED WITH ALIMONY 

reached its climax while we were prepar- 
ing to issue ''Frenzied Finance" in book 
form. Literary friends of Mr. Lawson 
had advised him that his material should 
be rearranged for book publication, and 
to this he agreed. At the last moment, 
however, by a quick decision of the author, 
it was all restored to the original shape in 
which it had appeared in the magazine. 
As we were very anxious to publish the 
first volume promptly, this embarrassed 
us, but we pushed the work forward, and 
having more than half the book in type, 
were pluming ourselves on our wonder- 
ful progress, when Mr. Lawson again 
called a halt with a long telegram. Our 
dismay may be imagined as we read that 
he preferred another style of type and 
that the book must be reset. He added 
that it was one of his constitutional pro- 
clivities to change things, and referred 
us to a certain remark made by District 
284 



DIVORCED WITH ALIMONY 

Attorney Jerome at a public dinner in 
Kansas City. On this occasion, which 
was in Mr. Lawson's honor, Mr. Ridgway 
had used this language : * ' When God 
needed a father of his country, He raised 
a Washington ; when He needed an 
emancipator for the country, He raised a 
Lincoln; when He needed a savior of 
the country. He raised a Lawson." Mr. 
Jerome, who followed, paraphrased this 
dizzy flight by saying that, in his opinion, 
when God created Lawson He needed 
someone to raise hell. 

The close of * ' Frenzied Finance " found 
us issuing between five and six hundred 
thousand copies monthly. Long before 
this we had striven to produce a magazine 
which, outside the Lawson feature, should 
be well worth its price, and hence it fell 
out that the great bulk of the circulation 
was retained. With an increased adver- 
tising income, not only were dividends in 
285 



DIVORCED WITH ALIMONY 

order, but also larger salaries. Visions 
came of owning my own home and an 
automobile or two. The magazine was 
on such a sound footing that it would take 
years of mismanagement or extravagant 
expenditure to injure the property. With 
the advertising department in the hands of 
a capable manager, I planned to travel 
extensively, taking turns with my partner. 
I even thought of going around the world. 
" See America first," was in my thought, 
however, and soon a trip was made to 
California. I dined at the Poodle Dog 
in San Francisco, fished at Catalina Island, 
saw the Grand Canon of Arizona, spent 
a delightful afternoon and evening with 
Professor John Muir on the edge of the 
Petrified Forest, and returned in Mr. 
Wilder' s private car to New York. I had 
been gone two months . During my absence 
ambitious plans for the establishment of a 
weekly paper had been hatched by Mr. 
286 



DIVORCED WITH ALIMONY 

Ridgway. It was to be a great national 
journal, published under the name of 
" Ridgway 's — A Militant Weekly for God 
and Country . " As big locally as nationally , 
it was to be published in fourteen of the 
largest cities of the country, with respon- 
sible heads and assistants in each city. The 
Washington Bureau was to be the great 
important feature. The people were to 
be told exactly what the Government was 
doing with the thousand millions of dollars 
it spends every year. In this city alone 
a staflF of from six to ten newsgatherers 
and editors would garner the week's history 
and telegraph it on Friday to each of the 
cities where "Ridgway's" was to appear. 
Moreover, it was to have, the Foreword 
stated, good wholesome fiction, with honest 
sentiment and "red blood." 

I was not in sympathy with this gran- 
diose dream. I had risked my all at the 
establishment of " Everybody's," and now 
287 



DIVORCED WITH ALIMONY 

that we were out of debt, I wanted 
to see a surplus before I gave serious 
thought to another pubhcation. I there- 
fore advised my partner to put it aside 
for another year or two till we should be 
in a better position to take it up. Sur- 
prised as I was at his determination not to 
delay the founding of his weekly, I was 
still more taken aback when the project 
was seconded by our silent partner. Mr. 
Wilder, during our business life, sat as 
judge upon our differences, which were 
few and far between, and in this instance 
I felt as confident as I had on the other 
occasions that he would decide with me. 
I found myself in the minority, however. 
Their idea was another "engine fighting 
for the common good." In my own life 
I had fought long and hard for my daily 
bread, and before taking up the fight for 
others on this colossal scale, I wanted to 
see myself so entrenched that I need not 
288 



DIVORCED WITH ALIMONY 

worry about personal needs. I was be- 
tween the upper and nether millstones. 
One of my partners was blessed as few 
men are blessed, and in addition had much 
of this world's goods. Mr. Ridgway had 
his interest in the magazine and the am- 
bition to plant his Excelsior flag on loftier 
heights. Divorce, therefore, was the nat- 
ural outcome, and it came quickly. Dis- 
posing of the larger part of my interest at 
a price which was considered fair, my 
alimony was further swelled by the con- 
tinuance of my salary for three years. 
S. S. McGlure and John S. Phillips, of 
"McGlure's Magazine," parted company 
about the same time, but the sentiment 
which attended the break between these 
college chums and intimate friends played 
no part in my separation from Mr. Ridg- 
way. We were merely co-workers for 
three happy years of business life, not 
without its dramatic moments. 
289 



DIVORCED WITH ALIMONY 

Since then water has flowed under the 
bridge. The weekly I opposed long since 
completed its short cycle from premature 
birth to early death. Its nineteen numbers 
entailed a loss of over $3oo,ooo! But 
"Everybody's," soundly based, has gone 
on from strength to strength. Even as I 
end this chapter the newspapers tell me 
that, by increasing its stock by three 
millions, the Butterick Company has ac- 
quired *' Everybody's Magazine. " Three 
millions of Butterick stock for the publica- 
tion we bought in igoS for $75,000 1 And 
it is worth it — even more. 

Since then, also, I have enjoyed to the 
full the vacation I have earned. The 
reader who has followed these pages to 
their close — my companion for thirty-jEve 
years — will realize what this has meant 
to me. I have looked upon men and cities. 
I have circled the globe. And, indeed, it 
is a small globe. Even in India my eyes 
290 



DIVORCED WITH ALIMONY 

fell upon the hoary adyertisement, 
"Mother Almost Gave Up Hope," and as 
I recognized one after another familiar 
nostrum, exiled from its native land, I 
perceived that the heathen in his blind- 
ness bovv^s down to more than w^ood and 
stone. 

In this holiday of mine there comes to 
me every now and then that sage warning 
of my old-time friend: "Don't get in a 
rut." RecalUng this, I think of men who 
have retired temporarily from business, 
only to lose all desire to resume their share 
in the world's work. Then I ask myself if 
this happy, do-as-you-please life is growing 
on me. Am I becoming a chronic pleasure- 
seeker? Am I falhng into a vacation rut? 
And I say to myself : ' ' Look out ! " 



291 



CHAPTER XV 
Oct of the Rut 



CHAPTER XV 
Out of the Rut 




HIS book, since those last 
lines were written, has been 
published in three countries 
and extraordinarily reviewed. 
It has been variously de- 
scribed as ' * The worst case of indecent 
mental exposure on record" and as * 'A new 
departure in literature — the firstling of 
a brood of auto-biographies such as the 
reading world has not seen before." 

It is perhaps interesting to state that the 
first of these critics relented. It is of far 
more interest to mention that the second 
was William Dean Howells, who, in the 
April, 191 1, number of " Harper's Maga- 
zine," devoted to these confessions the 
entire four pages of his Easy Chair. 
395 



OUT OF THE RUT 



A book capable of rousing such diverse 
opinions was naturally hard to name. The 
title originally selected was ' ' Divorced — 
with Alimony." Being in doubt, I asked 
the opinion of a number of literary friends. 
They called it undignified, misleading, sen- 
sational. I thanked them for their advice, 
but remained unconvinced. Then along 
came a man who pointed out that the 
book, if published with this title, would 
be listed in all libraries and publishers* 
catalogues under the heading " Divorce." 
This struck me as a real objection, and I 
regretfully laid my first choice away. 

As the French edition of the book was 
printed while the English title was still a 
moot point, it reached the book stalls 
under the name of ' ' Les Etapes du Succes, 
Souvenirs d'un Business Man Americain." 
To me, however, the book stood more for 
progress than mere success, and so the 
American edition bore that old Anglo- 
296 



OUT OF THE RUT 



Saxon word ' 'Astir," which Kterally means 
" On the Move." But some people in- 
sisted on pronouncing this title as if it 
were a flower rather than a synonym of 
activity, and for this and reasons more 
cogent the London edition was christened 
'* Getting On," for in England '* How are 
you getting on?" is a familiar greeting. 
Just what problem in nomenclature I 
should have had to grapple with had I 
closed with the ofier of a certain Berlin 
publisher, I shudder to think ! 

Now none of the names already used 
seemed to suit this particular edition, and 
I have therefore pitched upon * ' Out of the 
Rut " as the most apt and expressive label 
for a work which has been characterized 
— and I think justly — as an epistle to the 
unambitious. The reader of these pages 
has surely gathered that my idea of prog- 
ress is to keep out of ruts. We are all 
of us prone to fall into them. Who does 
297 



OUT OF THE RUT 



not know the man in the golf rut who 
can discourse of nothing but puts and 
drives ; the rabid motorist, whose conver- 
sation fairly reeks of gasolene ; the liter- 
ary nuisance, who, completely out of touch 
with the life we live, thinks only of books ; 
the financial bore, who babbles ticker-talk 
every hour he is awake and not infre- 
quently while he sleeps ? And then , polar 
opposite to the last named, there is the 
man in the vacation rut. I can speak by 
the card here, for the vacation rut is the 
only one of which I have ever been afraid. 
This book was the outcome of a vacation 
which threatened to degenerate into a rut ; 
it was also one of the steps by which I 
climbed out. 

The way of it was this : In the autumn 
of 1910 I returned to New York with the 
intention of re-entering the magazine field. 
I enjoyed life abroad, but felt that I was 
too young to retire permanently; I believed 

298 



OUT OF THE RUT 



that my place was in America and in the 
business I knew best. From the vantage 
point of a suite of oflGces in the MetropoHtan 
Tower, hard by the great clock, I began 
to look about. Vast, powerful, inspiring, 
the city which, of all I have seen, seems to 
me the most wonderful, stretched mile on 
mile beneath my eyes. Would I again be- 
come a fellow worker with those millions? 
Then to my eyrie came all sorts and 
conditions of men bringing all sorts and 
conditions of schemes. Only those which 
had to do with publishing interested me, 
and publishing conditions, I straightway 
discovered, had in my absence undergone 
many changes. There was, for example, 
the attitude of the postal authorities. The 
new Postmaster General, Mr. Hitchcock, 
had the laudable ambition to put his de- 
partment on a self-supporting basis, and, 
like his predecessors, saw his chief ob- 
stacle in the prevailing regulations regard- 
299 



OUT OF THE RUT 



ing second-class mail. More generous 
than other governments, the United States 
had been carrying magazines for the pub- 
lishers at the rate of a cent a pound, and 
this Mr. Hitchcock in his general scheme 
of reform deemed too low. His proposal 
to raise the rate to four cents, however, 
caused something like a panic among the 
publishers of ten and fifteen cent maga- 
zines of great circulation. With the larger 
part of their advertising income employed 
to ofiset the manufacturing loss — for the 
subscriber to a low price magazine gets it 
below cost — there was a loud cry that the 
proposed rates meant deficit and ruin. 

In addition to this exceedingly live issue, 
there were in particular two phases of the 
magazine situation which I realized would 
make it difficult for me to locate myself in 
the right way. One was the tendency of 
magazines to join forces in groups, domi- 
nated by one holding company and one 
3oo 



OUT OF THE RUT 



set of men. Though a logical develop- 
ment of the times, this did not appeal to 
me. I had had partners equal in interest 
and when differences arose, as they always 
will, somebody had to get the best or worst 
of it. The other new phase of magazine 
making which I did not care for was the 
all too popular device of financing an un- 
successful publication by selling stock to 
the public. More than one magazine that 
had sold bonds and stocks to its subscrib- 
ers was deeply in debt to the ' ' paper 
man" and others. It would have been 
possible for me to become the responsible 
head of one of these companies, provided 
I had been willing to finance the concern, 
issuing company bonds to the creditors in 
the rosy expectation that the interest on 
those bonds might be met and even divi- 
dends be paid on the watered stock of past 
mismanagement. I realized, however, 
that to make up this grand deficit five or 
3oi 



OUT OF THE RUT 



perhaps ten years of hard, incessant work 
would be necessary, and I decided to leave 
such Herculean tasks to younger men. 

One unusual proposition came across 
my horizon. A long established publica- 
tion, issuing an edition well into a mil- 
lion copies monthly from its own printing 
plant, could be purchased at a price ap- 
proximating three-quarters of a million 
dollars. To finance a purchase of this 
magnitude required a partner, active or 
silent, with much money, and involved 
the sentence to five or ten years* hard 
labor aforesaid. As I went through the 
building, located not far from Brooklyn 
Bridge, my thoughts reverted to that dis- 
tant day in Providence when I turned my 
back on the dingy quarters which housed 
an opportunity. I did want work — I 
was seeking it as I had sought it all 
through my business career — but inas- 
much as I was not forced by any neces- 
3o2 



OUT OF THE RUT 



sity, I determined that when I found 
myself, the location and environment 
must be agreeable. Long before this I 
had planned the kind of publication I 
wished to possess, but I realized that to 
start one afresh was a prodigious task. 
If either money or organization lacked, 
it would mean failure. To be sure, one 
publisher of the over-optimistic type sug- 
gested that it would not be difficult to sell 
half a million dollars' worth of stock to 
the people for a new weekly to be called 
" Thayer's," but I had no taste for such 
methods. I sought either a publication 
just on the edge of success and needing 
to be pulled over, or one already arrived 
which would benefit by some money, 
more brains and much work. If I could 
not get back into harness without imitat- 
ing the stock-jugglers or becoming the 
hired man of a combination, I would stay 
out altogether. There would still remain 
3o3 



OUT OF THE RUT 



Paris, Julien's atelier in the Rue du Dragon, 
and a dormant talent for painting to fall 
back upon. 

It was at this time that The Smart Set 
Magazine, which I already had in mind, 
was mentioned to me as a possible pur- 
chase. It appealed to me for a number 
of reasons. It was well established; its 
exclusive clientele had never been disturbed 
by magazines founded in imitation ; it was 
practically alone in its field. More im- 
portant was the fact that The Smart Set 
had made money from the second year of 
its existence, With editions averaging 
100,000 copies monthly, and a subscrip- 
tion rate which insured a profit, there was 
no loss to be met by the advertising sec^ 
tion. This seemed to me to be the most 
enviable position that a magazine could be 
in, and I realized that, given the fair 
amount of advertising to which it was 
entitled, The Smart Set could be made in 
3o4 



OUT OF THE RUT 

every way — literary, artistic, typographi- 
cal and as an advertising medium — the 
great international fiction magazine of the 
w^orld. 

Many publishers had negotiated for its 
purchase without success, and I, too, 
would probably have failed had not this 
book come into the hands of the owner, 
Col. William D. Mann. His own words, 
given to the press after the deal had been 
closed, put the story in a paragraph : 

" The Smart Set, which, since I 
founded it in 1900, has made profits of 
over half a million dollars, has been sold. 
The purchaser is John Adams Thayer, 
who made such a remarkable success as 
one of the publishers of ' Everybody's 
Magazine.' I did not wish to sell The 
Smart Set ; it had bulked large in my 
life for more than a decade. I wanted a 
publisher for it, and after reading Mr. 
Thayer's business autobiography, 'Astir,' 
3o5 



OUT OF THE RUT 



which appeared not long ago, I picked 
him as the ideal co-worker. Frankly, I 
offered him, free of payment, almost a 
half interest, as the potential value of 
the property with the right publisher 
would have been very great. My offer, 
for certain reasons, was declined, and 
realizing that, in Mr. Thayer's hands, 
the property of The Smart Set would be 
better conserved, and that its distinctive 
character as 'A magazine of cleverness,' 
given it by its first editor, would be not 
only maintained but intensified, I decided 
to sell outright." 

It was on February 20th, a date men- 
tioned several times in this volume, that 
the papers were finally signed, and im- 
mediately thereafter, with an enlarged edi- 
torial staff, work was begun on our first 
number. Since then much has been ac- 
complished. The old friends of the maga- 
zine have remained steadfast, and new 
3o6 



OUT OF THE RUT 



readers — in tens , hundreds and thou- 
sands — have come wherever the real aim 
of the new Smart Set is known. Much 
thought has been given to formulate that 
aim in the strongest and briefest manner. 
Here is the result — The Smart Set Idea, 
as I see it : 

' ' The Smart Set Magazine has no mis- 
sion, social, religious or political, to per- 
form. But it must not be supposed that 
it has no purpose, no moving spirit. Be- 
hind it, animating all its pages and shap- 
ing all its activities, there is a very Definite 
and Persistent Idea. Its Prime Purpose is 
to Provide Lively Entertainment J or Minds 
That Are Not Primitive,'' 

In a word, let there be one magazine 
which will make the world forget its 
troubles ; one magazine which will pull 
the heartsick and brain-weary out of the 
rut. 



3o7 



INDEX 



Adams, Samuel Hopkins, 3o6 
Advertising, objectionable, 

Mr. Thayer's figbt against, 

87-89, 198-206, 235-238 
Amalgamated Copper, 261 
"American Homes," 262 
American News Company, 

281 
American Smelting Company, 

269 
American Tobacco Company, 

Arkansas, 58, 59, 61, 67 

Arnold, Matthew, 7 

' ♦ Atlantic Monthly , " the , 1 1 2 , 

ii3 
Ayer & Son, N. W., 100 



Balmer, Thomas, no, 188, 

189, 195, 221 

Bar Harbor, Me., 70, 161. 
Barber, Mr., 182, i33, i43 
Barr Brothers (St. Louis), 

lOI 

Barratt, Thomas J., ii5 
Barrymore, Maurice, xv 



Beacon Park race course, the, 
10 

Bellevue Hotel (Philadelphia) , 

121 
Belton, Texas, 62 
Blaine, James G., 71, 249 
Bok, Edward W., 80, 92, io5 
Bonner, Robert, 99, 100 
Boston, Mass., 7, i4, 21, 82, 
4i, 52, 75, 98, ii3, 182, 
159, 160, 161, 168, i64, 
167, 168, 169, 178, 199, 
200, 202, 216, 217, 218, 
25o, 25i, 254, 259, 261, 
262, 278, 274 
"Boston Commonwealth," 

the, 6 
Boston fire, the, 252 
"Boston Globe," the, 252 
"Boston Herald," the, 74, 

166 
" Boston Journal," the, needs 
an advertising manager, 
i58-i6o; acquires Mr. 
Thayer, 160; Mr. Thayer's 
work on, 160-170, 178 
Boston Tavern, 72 



309 



INDEX 



Boston Trpe Foundry, 4 1 , 42 , 

45, 5i, 57, 66, 72 
Boston Unitarian Associa- 
tion, 4 
Brady, Mr., 226 
Bright, WiUiam, 64 
Brighton, Mass., 10 
Brooke, Major-General, 172 
BurKngton, ^t., 68, 69 
Butterick, Ebenezer, 174 
Butterick Publishing Com- 
pany, 174, 179, 182, 210, 
216, 219, 220, 221, 290 

Caine, Hall, 267, 258 

California, 286 

Cambridge, Mass.. 6, 10, i4. 
i5, 74 

Cambridge High School, 12 

Carlton Hotel, 212 

Caslon Type Foundry (Lon- 
don 1, 5 1 

Castellanos, Governor-Gen- 
eral, 171, 178 

Catalina Island, 286 

" Centennials," the, 11 

Central Type Foundry (St. 
Louis), 49. 5 1 

♦' Centun.-," the. 280 

Centura- Company. 226. 2 33 

" Chapters TMiich Went Be- 
fore," the, 276 

Charles River, 10, 1 4 



Cheshire Place (N. H.), 176, 

188 
Chicago, 16, 17, 21, 23, 24, 

28, 02, i56 
"Chicago Inter-Ocean," the, 

24 
"Christian Leader," the, 6 
Clark, Mr., i34. i43, i44 
' ' Classified Advertising De- 
partment," 279 
Clarkson, John, 11, 12 
Cole, Edward E., 163 
Collier, Robert, 206 
"Collier's Y»'eeUy," ao5 
Constable Building (New 

York), 149 
Corn Exchange Bank CSew 

York I, 260 
Cosgrave, John O'Hara, 261, 

253, 254 
Cuba, 170, 172 
Curtis, C>Tus H. K., 80, 81, 

84, 88, 95, 99, 100, loi, 

109, III, ii3, ii4, 116, 

117, 119, 197, 235 
Curtis. Mrs. C>tus H. K., 80 
Cummings, Mr.. 29 

"Daily Hotel Reporter," the. 

14 
Deland, Lorin F., 162 
"Delineator," the, Mr. Cur- 
tis advertises in, 100, loi ; 



3io 



INDEX 



reorganization of , 17 4, 176; 
Mr. Thayer advertising 
manager of, 179-222 
Doubleday, Page & Company, 

253 
Dw-ver, Daniel, iq. 



culation of "Everybody's 
Magazine," 246 ; its first 
publication, 267, 278-276; 
how written, 269; brought 
out in book form, 283-285 ; 
mentioned, 243, 255 



Ellsworth, William W., 233, 
234 

•'Everybody's Magazine," 
published by Mr. Thayer 
and E. J. Ridgway, 227- 
289; obtains "Frenzied 
Finance," 254-256 ; first 
pubHcation of ' ' Frenzied 
Finance," 257, 278-276 ; 
circulation reaches a 
million, 276 ; increase in 
advertising, 276-280; sub- 
scription price raised, 280- 
282; success of, 285-286; 
Mr. Thayer retires from, 
289; acquired by the But- 
terick Company, 290; 
mentioned, 186 

"Fanny Fern," 99 
Field, Eugene, io5 
Franklin, Benjamin, 79, 116 
Frazee, Jennie, loi, 102 
*' Frenzied Finance ," anecdote 
of, 240-24 1 ; increases cir- 



Galveston, Texas, 63 
Georgetown, Texas, 62 
Goldsmith Maid, 10 
Grand Canon of Arizona, 286 
"Great American Fraud," 

Adams' articles on, 206 
Greeley, Horace, 16 
Green, Elizabeth Shippen, 

102 
Greene, Colonel, 261, 262, 268 
Green's Hotel (Philadelphia), 



"Harper's Magazine," 280 

Havana, 170 

Hayes and Wheeler Cadets, 

249 
Hayes-Tilden Campaign, the, 

249 
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 10 
Hot Springs, Ark., 69 

"Index to Advertisements," 

280 
India, 290 



3ii 



INDEX 



Jerome, William Travers, 

285 
Jones Company, J. M. W., 27 
"Just Get * The Delineator,' " 

216 

Kansas City, 286 
Knapp, Mrs. Louisa. See 
Curtis, Mrs. Cyrus H. K. 

"Ladies' Home Journal," 
the, advertises for adver- 
tising man, 74, 76 ; em- 
ploys Mr. Thayer, 76 ; 
history of, 80-81 ; its typo- 
graphical change, 81-89; 
Mr. Thayer's vv^ork on, 
79-120; mentioned, 129, 
i33, 157, 161, 186, 188, 
189, 2o5, 206, 217, 280 

Larcom, Lucy, 6 

Lawson, Thomas W., in 
Tilden-Hayes campaign, 
249-260 ; his knowledge 
of inner history of period, 
260; story of Amalgamated 
Copper proposed to, 26 1- 
254; decides to vk^rite story, 
255 ; his arrangement with 
*' Everybody's," 255-258 ; 
anecdote of, 269-261 ; his 
meeting with Col. Greene, 
261-263 : his friendliness 



with Mr. Thayer, 359-270 ; 

mentioned, 24o 
"Lawson History of the 

America's Cup," the, 269 
Lewis, Alfred Henry, 233 
Linotype. See Mergenlhaler 

typesetting machine 
Livermore, Mary, 6 
London, England, 5i, 147, 

210, 211, 267 
Longfellow, Henry Wads- 
worth, 1 4, 1 5 
"Looping the Life Circle," 

267-269 
Lorimer, George Horace, 117 
" Lowell Offering," the, 6 
Luce, Robert, 76 
Lucky Box, the. See ' ' Three 

Star Ring Lucky Box" 
Ludlow, Major-General, 170 

" Madness of Much Money," 

Lewis' article on, 233 
Massachusetts, 6, 2o3 
McGlure, S. S., 226, 226, 

289 
" McClure's Magazine," 226, 

266, 289 
McKinley, William, 170 
Mergenthaler typesetting 
machine, 43 

Miller, W. F., 198, aoa, 

203 



3ia 



INDEX 



MIxon, 1 55, i56 

Morgan, John Pierpont, aao, 
383 

Muir, John, 286 

Munsey, Frank A., employs 
Mr. Thayer as business 
manager, 120, 121 ; his 
ability as a business man, 
125-127 ; letter to Mr. 
Thayer, 127-188 ; letter 
from Mr. Thayer, 189- 
i48; Mr. Thayer leaves, 
1 48-1 5 1 ; his hard work, 
226 

Munsey Company, Frank A., 
126, 1 46 

** Munsey 's Magazine," i49, 
i55, 286, 256 

National Republican Com- 
mittee, 107 

New Bedford, Mass., 83 

New Boston, 69 

*'New England Magazine," 
the, 75 

New London, Conn,, 228 

New York, N. Y., 121, i25, 
i4i, i55, 1.74, 202, 218, 
228, 284, 258, 259, 264, 
286 

**New York Herald," the, 
82, 99 

** New York Ledger," the, 99 



" New York Sun," the, 279 
Newnes, Sir George, i46, 
1 47 



Oakley, Violet, loa 
Ogden, Robert C, 281 
O'Meara, Stephen, 159, 160, 

i65, 166, 170 
"Outlook," the, 279 



Paris, xi, 212, 2i4 

Parker's Lucky Box, 198, 
200-202, 2o3 

Petrified Forest, 286 

Philadelphia, 76, 79,80, i44, 
159, 202, 217, 218, 259, 
268 

PhiUips, John S., 225, 289 

Poodle Dog, the (San Fran- 
cisco), 286 

Pope, Albert A., 226 

Potter, Mr., 75 

" Printer," the, 8 

"Printer's Ink," 167 

" Prodigal Son," Caine's, 257 

Providence, R. I., 86 

" Providence Times," the, 36 

** Psychology of Advertis- 
ing," Scott's, 2l5 

♦' Puritan," the, i33 

i3 



INDEX 



Quebec, 276 
Quincy, Mass., 4 

Raymond, Charles E., i85, 
186 

•' Remedy," the, 255 

Ridgway, Erman J., associ- 
ated with Mr. Thayer in 
publishing "Everybody's 
Magazine," 227-289 ; his 
" Weekly," 254, 286-290; 
mentioned, i3i 

Ridgway-Thayer Publishing 
Company, 265 

*'Ridgway"s Weekly," 254, 
286-290 

Riverside Press, 10, i3, 75, 
112 

Rogers, Henry H., 24o, 24i, 
281 

Rogers, John K., 42, 46, 47, 
57, 66 

Roosevelt, Theodore, 234 

St. John, James A., 73 

St. Louis, Mo., 49, 58, 63, 

lOI 

St. Louis Type Foundry, 49, 

5i, 57, 66 
St. Regis, the (New York), 

264, 265 
"Salem News," the, 44 
Santiago, battle of, 169 



"Saturday Evening Post,*^ 

the, 116, 117, 197 
Scott, Walter Dill, 2i5 
Scribner's Sons, Charles, 80 
Shepard , Nor well & Company ^ 

162 
Smith, Jessie Willcox, 102 
Spain, 170 

Spanish War, the, 168 
Sphinx Club, the, 197 
Standard Oil Company, 25o> 

281, 282 
State House, Old (Boston), 

262 
Sunday Supplement, the, i65 

Taylor, Charles H., 25i, 252, 
269 

Temple, Texas, 62 

Texarkana, 60 

Texas, 58, 69, 60, 63, 64, 67 

Thayer, John Adams, father 
of John A. Thayer, 6, 7 

Thayer, Mrs. John Adams, 
motherof John A.Thayer, 6 

Thayer, John Adams, his an- 
cestors, xiii, his birth, 7; 
becomes an amateur printer 
and publisher, 8; hisyouth, 
7-12 ; early work as a 
printer, l3-i7; goes to 
Chicago, 16 ; joins the 
Typographical Union, 22; 



3i4 



INDEX 



in Chicago, 21-82; returns 
to Boston, 32 ; goes to New 
Bedford, 33 ; begins to 
solicit advertising, 33-37; 
returns again to Boston, 87; 
takes up typefounding, 4i- 
5 1 ; tries to sell patent 
hammers, 5i— 62; returns 
to printing, 62 ; on the 
road from Texas to Maine, 
67-74 ; applies for position 
with * ' Ladies' Home Jour- 
nal," 76 ; employed as ad- 
vertising man by * ' Ladies' 
Home Journal," 76-96 ; as 
advertising manager, 96- 
120; becomes business 
manager for Frank A. 
Munsey, 120; farewell din- 
ner in Philadelphia to, 1 2 1 ; 
begins work for Mr. Mun- 
sey, 127; letter from Mr. 
Munsey, 127-188; letter to 
Mr. Munsey, 189-148; 
leaves Mr. Munsey, i48- 
i5i ; looks for a new posi- 
tion, 1 55-1 60; advertising 
manager of the "Boston 
Journal," 160-170; visits 
Cuba, 170-178 ; returns to 
Boston, 178; negotiations 
with Mr. Wilder, 178-175; 
advertising manager of 

3 



**The Delineator," 179- 
222 ; his fight against ob- 
jectionable advertising, 
198-206; his idea of be- 
coming a publisher, 226- 
227 ; associated with E. J. 
Ridgway in publishing 
' ' Everybody's Magazine," 
227-289; his first glimpse 
of Mr. Lawson, 249; en- 
deavors to meet Mr. Law- 
son, 25i-253; experiences 
with Mr. Lawson, 269- 
270; his travels, 286; re- 
tires from "Everybody's," 
289 ; his vacation, 290-291 
Thayer,Mrs. John Adams, 170 
•'Theory of Advertising," 

Scott's, 2l5 
Thompson, J. Walter, io3 
Thompson Company, J. 

Walter. i85 
"Three Star Ring Lucky 
Box," 198, 200-202, 2o3 
Tilden-Hayes Campaign, the, 

249 
Tilton, Ralph, 248, 244 
Tilton, Theodore, 243 
Touraine, the (Boston), 262 
Truth, Francis, 198, 199, 

200, 2o3 
Typographical Union, the, 
21, 24, 28, 4i 

i5 



INDEX 



*' Uncle Tom's Cabin," i5 
United States Steel Corpora- 
tion, 24o 
University Press, i5 

Vermont, 68 

Waco, Texas, 62 
Waldorf-Astoria, the, 197 
Walker, Charles, 10, 76, ii3 
Wanamaker, John, 281, 253 
Wanamaker's, 160 
Webster Grammar School 
(Cambridge), 12 



"Where Independence Was 

Born," Wilson's, 4 
Wilder, George W., 178, 
174, 175, 179, 180, i8i, 
182, 188, 189, 216, 219, 
222, 228, 229, 280, 25l, 
286, 288, 289; his son, 
218 
Wilson, Daniel Monroe, 4 
Wilson, Francis A., 91 
"Woman's Journal," the, 6 



Youth's Companion, 
91 



the. 



3i6 



OUT OF THE RUT 

JOHN ADAMS THAYER 

T^HIS extraordinary book is the life-story 
-'^ of a successful business man, a man 
who started on the bottom rung of the 
ladder and, by dint of sheer energy and 
the persistent use of his faculties, forced his 
way to the top. Few books published in 
recent years have excited so much general 
interest or called forth so much enthusiastic 
comment. Mr. W. D. Howells, the 
foremost American critic of our times, 
writing in Harper's Magazine, says of it : 
"It is not a romance but a piece of actual 
reality, naked and unashamed; not the 
story of an adventurer of any sort, but of 
an average American business man, with a 
high idea of hustle, and an inextinguishable 
fire of energy; the record of opportunity 
made or seized." He also speaks of "the 
breath-stopping, hair-raising, heart-to-heart 



frankness, the astounding mtimacy of this 
book." 

The New York Times says : " It is one 
of those illuminated parables of success fur- 
nished by the lives of so many American 
business men. It is a great book for a 
young man to read, for almost every chap- 
ter is an object lesson on how to get along 
in business in a legitimate way." 

The Boston Herald characterizes the 
book as "a record of indomitable pluck, 
ingenuity, tact and perseverance;" The 
Denver Republican declares that "men 
who toil, men who do and dare, will gain 
strength from the reading of this book;" 
The San Francisco Argonaut considers it 
" such an autobiography as Franklin might 
have penned had he lived in these more 
bustling times;" The New York Press 
finds in it " an uplift that is positively in- 
spiring;" The Washington Herald says: 
"This true story is infinitely more interest- 
ing than most novels that are written now- 
adays. 



The Book News asserts that " the tone 
of the book is distinctly American, and it is 
the American manhood revealed that gives 
the work its appeal ; " The Portland {Ore- 
gon) Telegram says: "It reads like a 
romance ; the book cant be put aside until 
the last line is read ; *' The Chicago Dial 
calls it "a virile tale, set forth wdth no 
maiden co)aiess;'* and The Chicago Bul- 
letin sees in it " a wonderful revelation of 
ufe*s possibilities." 

John Adams Thayer, the author of the 
book, was formerly one of the owners of 
Everybody s Magazine, now owner of 
The Smart Set Magazine, and intensely 
in the public eye. 



MAY 2 1912 



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